(in translation) Today I got on
Wisenews and I did not find a single news report on the local anti-war
protest. Did you know about it? More than 100 Hong Kong people,
including locals, Lebanese, Indonesians, Filipinos, Americans, Japanese,
Indians, with different religious backgrounds (Muslims and Christians)
marched in Central/Admiralty yesterday. You probably don't know
because none of the newspapers mentioned it.

In the grand scheme of things, it was less
important for the newspapers to cover the demonstration than to inform the
public and lead opinion. Here is an excerpt from Lu Feng's editorial
in Apple
Daily (Hong Kong) and this means much more than a short story on the
demonstration. Why? Because this was the flagship editorial
statement from a newspaper with a circulation of 350,000.

(in translation) As I watched the rescuers bring out one
after another dust-covered, lifeless children from the collapsed buildings,
I only felt sorrow in my heart. What did these Lebanese children do
wrong? Why must the Israeli warplanes and bombs insist on killing
them?

According to the IDF, they had warned the
residents to leave the villages in southern Lebanon. Since Hezbollah
was firing rockets from this area, Hezbollah and the local residents are
responsible for this incident.

This manner of blaming the victims is
shocking and revolting! Everybody knows that the Lebanese residents
want to leave the battle zone in southern Lebvanon, but they cannot.
Ever since the IDF invaded Lebanon more than two weeks ago, more than
700,000 Lebanese persons have been displaced. It is impossible for
this huge number of refuges to leave southern Lebanon and find safe haven
elsewhere. Most of them stay in the war zone and hope to get by from
day to day. They hide in the few buildings and hope that they can be
spared the Israeli artillery shells and bombs. But the Israeli attack
was too intense and many Lebanese did not survive, including many Lebanese
children who were buried in the debris or killed by the firepower. Do
these Lebanese who have nowhere to go really deserve to die? Are they
really responsible for their own deaths as the IDF says?

Actually, even if the refuges leave the war
zone, they may not be safe even though they have gotten away from the places
with the most intensive fighting. It does not mean that they can live
in peace, because the Israeli firepower does not distinguish between
military and civilian targets. The Israeli will not hold back for
women and children, not even for UN peacekeepers. Isn't that
true? The UN observers in Lebanon communicated with the Israeli
authorities many times to make sure that their post would not be attacked
and Israel promised them as such, but that was an empty promise; multiple
Israeli shells hit the observersation post, causing the deaths of four UN
observer and many other injuries. If the UN facilities which represent
the international commuinty could be a target of attack, then where can the
Lebanese civilians and children escape to?

... At the G8 meeting, US President George
W. Bush said in private: "(they need to do is get Syria to get
Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." Perhaps the
international commuinty ought to say something like: "(they) need to do
is get US to get Israel to stop doing the shit and it's over."

[093] That
Devil of a Teacher (07/31/2006) (Sing
Tao) The latest serial drama on Hong Kong's TVB is creating
quite a stir. When the Japanese import "The Queen's
Classroom" (女王的教室)
debuted on Sunday, it had 1.6 million viewers and broke the record for a
foreign series at that time slot.

The central character in the series is a ruthless and emotionless female
teacher, who began the first day in class by telling the students:
"Stupid and lazy people will suffer unjust treatment their whole lives;
smart and dilligent people will receive countless privileges (愚昧與懶惰的人，將終生為不公平的待遇而感到痛苦﹔聰明與努力的人，將獲得無數特權。)"
In order to ensure that the students get the best examination results, the
teacher resorted to tactics such as physical punishment, threats, invasion
of privacy, etc. She forbade the students to use the restrooms during
class and canceled summer vacation. The newspaper also said that she
employed Cultural Revolution-style criticisms -- the class was divided into
sections that reported on each other and she used the First Emperor of Qin's
method of collective guilt by punishing the entire section if one member makes a
mistake.

[092] An
Empirical Example of Bridge Blogging (07/31/2006)
- Hong Kong blogger Learned
Friend posted her experience of an encounter with twenty students
between the ages of 9 and 15, specifically with respect to their attitudes
towards other social groups (mainlanders, Filipinas, Indians)
- That Chinese-language post was translated by the EastSouthWestNorth
blogger into English: With
Parents Like These, It Follows That ...- An Indian blog Sepia Mutiny picked up this English-language
translation in the post Hindi-Hong Kong-Bhai-Bhai
and generated many comments. The overall tone was less accusatory
about Chinese prejudices than self-reflections.

That is what bridge blogs are good for ...

[091] Drug
Smugglers (07/31/2006) (Metropolis Times via Wenxue
City) Yesterday at 12:30pm, the Number 2 Narcotics Squad
received a tip that nine Xinjiang women were flying from Manshi into Kunming
with drugs. At 12:55pm, the squad was told that the airplane would
arrive at 1:02pm and so they decided to wait for the suspects at the baggage
collection area. But none of the passengers that they saw fit the
description. However, the police also found out that more than 20
Xinjiang women were on another plane heading to Guangzhou from Manshi with
an intermediate stop in Kunming. Those passengers were now in an
airport waiting lounge. The police raced over there and found 26
women, some pregnant, plus four children.
Upon searching, 25 of the women were found to be carrying drugs on their
persons and the remaining woman was shifty in her answers under police
questioning (she had no luggage and she had only several dozen RMB plus an
expensive, non-working mobile phone). Therefore, all the women brought
back to the police station. This drug smuggling case involves the
largest number of people in one case as far as anyone can remember.

[090] A
Photographer in Gaza (07/30/2006) From
Scout Tufankjian in Slate:A Photographer in Gaza,
this is so raw, blunt and honest that I ought to save it:

All and all, I have it pretty easy here. My hotel has a generator that runs 24-7, while most Gazans have electricity only a few hours a day, if that. The IDF bombed the main power station a few weeks ago, and it looks like it might take years to fix. My hotel even has wireless Internet and hasn't yet run out of food, which is served on a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. (Gaza has the sweetest strawberries in the world.) More important, I can leave whenever I want to, something most Palestinians can't do. If I decide that I want to see the opening night of my boyfriend's play, or catch a Red Sox game or attend my mother's 60th birthday party at a Connecticut casino, I can.

But most of the time, I'm happy to stay. The nights are not as much fun as they were before the foreign press corps picked up and left en masse for Lebanon and Haifa, but I enjoy my days more now that the streets are not clogged with other reporters. Although international attention has shifted to Lebanon, the violence here continues unabated, so there's plenty to do. And the Gazans generally treat me with warmth and courtesy. They see the foreign press as a lifelinea chance to tell the world their story. Almost everybody believes that the world will listen.

I have my doubts. Polaris, my agency, sends me plenty of e-mails reassuring me that my pictures are not being sent out into a void, but the outside world doesn't seem all that interested in making the shelling stop. My politics are pretty simple. Killing people is bad. Killing civilians is worse. Killing children is an obscenitywhether it's the Katyusha rockets that killed two kids playing in their yard in Nazareth or the 6-year-old girl killed in her house in Shajiya. But no one in charge of this conflict has much to gain by stopping it. With each new atrocity, the extremists on both sides gain greater strength. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has never been more popular in Israel, and Palestinians are hunkering down behind Hamas.

I asked one of my best friends, a local AP photographer, how he was doing and he said, "Work is good. The situation is
kharra (shit)." That pretty much sums up life here. It's the essential contradiction of what I do. If my kid were killed, I wouldn't want some grimy little snapper sticking her lens in my face, but I do that to people every day. I don't beat myself up for it, either. I'm here to work, not to watch or to
hold their hand and experience their pain. And it's my job to show that the shelling leaves real people, crying real tears, over their really dead sons and daughters.

[089] A
German View of Chinese Bloggers (07/30/2006) (Deutsche
Welle) Last week, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung began a
series of articles on the Internet in China. The first article was
about Chinese bloggers, who have three unique characteristics:

First, most Chinese bloggers do not write
anonymously. On the contrary, they want to wear the shining cloak of
scandals to gain public attention and elevate their standings. Many
bloggers accomplish fame through their blogs and then they become official
media workers. Second, the study of the blogs of 175 bloggers showed
that none of them covered political or social issues. Third, most
blogs are comments or interpretations of officially sanctioned contents and
there are no investigative news or participatory social reports. The
power of the fourth estate is missing in the Internet.

The 16 million bloggers are not
subversive. Therefore, it was not surprising that at the National
People's Congress in April this year, there was an open discussion as to
whether national chairman Hu Jintao and all People's Congress
representatives should have their own blogs. In China, blogs are not
developing from the bottom up. Instead, it is a political organization
that is turned upside down from above.

[088] The
Nightmare Continues for Chao Chien-ming (07/30/2006) The PR
sideshow continues as the media clearly do not like President Chen
Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming. That means everything that he
does is magnified in a negative light. The following is about a court
appearance as reported in Apple
Daily.

Previously, in The
Seven Men In Black, Chao Chien-ming was accompanied into court by
some men dressed in black looking like gangsters from a movie. This
time, there were no more men in black. Instead, more than 130 police
officers were deployed, once again leading to charges of special privileges.

Previously, in The
Chin of the President's Son-ln-Law, an issue was made about how Chao
Chien-ming tends to tilt his chin upwards at a 45-degree angle in a pose
that might be construed as haughty and arrogant. His lawyer's
explanation was that this was a physical problem with Chao.
Here is the detailed report: During the court session, Chao drank from his
own mineral water bottle a total of nine times. He frequently used his
45-degree head pose to look around the court. About halfway through
the session, he raised his left hand and put it on the back of the wooden
bench and leaned backwards while shaking his right leg and using his right
hand to tug at the beard underneath his chin or scratching an itch on his
face. Prior to arriving at the court, a television SNG (Satellite News
Gathering) vehicle following Chao in his tax cab caught sight of him passing
and staring pensively at the luxury mansion that he was reported to be
interested to buy at more than NT$100 million.

(United Daily
News) On this occasion, Chao Chien-ming did not bring his Mont
Blanc pen but he brought a Nokia PDA with which he looked at the pictures of
his newborn son.

As this was the final edition of his popular column 原是物語,
this can be said to be a significant moment.

[086] Destroying
The Evidence - Part 2 (07/29/2006) (Apple
Daily) At 10pm at night, the police inspected a beauty salon
and found a locked room. After knocking on the door for three minutes,
someone finally opened the door. In the room was a topless man and a
fully clothed service worker who wore no underwear. The police officer
asked the man: "Did you complete the transaction? How much was
it?" The man said dispiritedly: "I did not finish yet.
I just managed to put on the condom. We had agreed on a price of
NT$3,600." The police officer asked: "Where is the
condom?" The man moved his mouth to point to the female service
worker's mouth and said nothing.

The police officer observed that the female service worker kept her mouth
tightly shut and said nothing. So he believed that the condom was in
her mouth. He demanded that she opened her mouth for inspection, but
she refused. He tried to pry her mouth open, but she resisted mightily
and then she made a hard swallowing effort and there was nothing in her
mouth. All those present were stunned. The female service worker
was then brought down to the police station "to assist in the
investigation."

[085] Head
Bangers of Hong Kong (07/29/2006) At the Comics Festival of
Hong Kong, "80,000 people break their heads" trying to get in on
the first day.
I'll let you ponder why 80,000 came out to the Comics Festival (55,000
already by 5pm) whereas 55,000 (or 28,000 according to another version) came
out to march for universal suffrage on July 1st this year (July 1st March Estimates
and The
Parachutist's Adventure in Hong Kong).

As for the rest of the people of Hong Kong, a significant number of them may
be up somewhere in Shenzhen, according to this Oriental
Daily story: The recent wave of police crackdown in the
Shenzhen villages of Three Sha's, One Shui (Shangsha, Xiasha, Shazui,
Shuiwei 上 沙, 下 沙, 沙 嘴, 水 圍)
with hundreds of people arrested each night has caused the traditional
'entertainment' business to collapse as the working girls are packing up and
heading home. In order to retain business, the new gimmick is to have
13- and 14-year old female students on summer vacation to stand in the
streets and provide company for as little as 120 RMB. As a result,
pedestrian traffic in the areas has picked up again. Of course, sexual
intercourse with young girls 14 or younger can result in jail time between 5
to 15 years in mainland China plus fines. If the act is against the
girl's will, the death penalty may be invoked. Is plaisir d'amour
worth it?

[Administrative Note]
(07/29/2006) My old service provider (Yahoo!) stinks in terms of
customer services and pricing, but at least they did not go down very
often. My current service provider (Dreamhost) has more attractive
pricing and offerings, but they go down more often than I would like.
On July 22, "At least a portion of our datacenter seems to have lost power very briefly. We have technicians driving to the datacenter now to see exactly what the situation is. If your site is down, we should have it taken care of shortly."
On July 28, 'There has apparently been another power outage at the datacenter. One of the generators caught fire and they were taken offline. Were waiting for more information and well post here as soon as we hear anything."
What gives?

[084] Savantas
(07/29/2006) Here is the brief Ming
Pao statement on the name of Regina Ip's Savantas think tank:

(in translation) There are different
sayings about the meaning of 'Savantas', including one that is completely
opposite. A reader recently consulted Joint Publishing Press' New
French-Chinese Dictionary and found that the former meaning of Savantas
refers to "people who pretend that they are learned, or people who
barely understand, or people who pretend to be experts."

According to the explanation of Regina Ip,
Savantas is derived from the French word 'savant' for learned people and
added with 'as' (as in the Latin words veritas, caritas, pietas) to
express the knowledge and wisdom of the think them. The vice executive
manager Gerald Henry of Alliance Française said that the French language
has the word 'savant' which means a knowledgeable person but not 'savantas.'

The name "Savantas" was built by combining the French word "savant", meaning a person of great learning, with the suffix of many Latin nouns (for example
veritas, caritas, pietas), to signify our accent on knowledge and wisdom.

But after sifting through the evidence, I am
not convinced about this alleged opposite meaning for 'savantas.' I have
not seen the primary evidence cited in the Ming Pao report (namely, the New
French-Chinese Dictionary). But why would I need a French-Chinese
dictionary if I want to find the meaning of a French word?

The best researched resources come from 戴珍
at InMediaHK
and InMediaHK.
But it is still not totally convincing. Here is the partial translation
from the first essay:

... All those learned people who value
knowledge and wisdom never thought that 'savantas' which is combined from
French and Latin was still a French word that means 'faux savant' (or 'fake
scholar') ...

But if I were to look up the synonyms,
then 'savantas' is listed with 'faux savant,' 'poseur' and other negative
words as well as 'maître,' 'savant' and other positive words. So the
use of the word will have to depend on the context.

For supporting evidence, 戴珍
has a citation from Molière's Les Fâcheux:

(in English)
And people like you should get away from the conversation
Of all these savantas who are good at nothing.

This is unconvincing because it is no
different from Richard Nixon's vice-president Spiro Agnew's characterization
of the Vietnam War student radical protestors as "effete intellectual
snobs," which should not equate all intellectuals as being
"effete" and "snobs" forever afterwards. In
Molière's play, 'savantas' could have easily been replaced by 'savants,'
'intellectuals,' or 'sages' without skipping a beat.

But, in the end, what is in a name
anyway? For me, the real puzzlement in all this is just why the contest
for Chief Executive is limited to current or former government officials
(Donald Tsang, Anson Chan, Regina Ip, Henry Tang, Arthur Li etc) while anyone
else without those kinds of credential need not apply. And it also seems that
prior government experience will qualify someone, no matter what the actual
performance was. How else can I explain the re-emergence of Ms. Regina
"Damaged Goods" Ip?

[083] Taiwan
Looks At The Beijing Olympics (07/28/2006) (United
Daily Press) (Survey of 812 adults (394 refusals) on July 8;
telephone survey based upon random sampling from the phone directory and
then randomixing the last two digits).

- 66% of respondents know that the 2008
Olympics will be held in Beijing

- 14% are proud that Beijing is the host;
2% are disgusted; 66% have no special feelings; 17% no opinion.

- 34% are proud of mainland Chinese gold
medalists; 2% feel negative about them; 51% have no special feelings; 11% no
opinion.

- 46% think the Olympics will greatly help
the mainland economy; 24% think it will help somewhat.

- 39% think the gap in international
standing between mainland and Taiwan will grow as a result of the Beijing
Olympics; 5% think the gap will shrink; 28% think that there won't be any
big changes; 27% no opinion.

- 18% think mainland and Taiwan will come
close as a result of the Beijing Olympics; 5% think that they will go
further apart; 45% think that there is no impact; 32% have no opinion.

- overall, 20% think that the Beijing
Olympics will be good for Taiwan; 20% think it will be bad; 42% think no
material impact; 22% no opinion.

[082] The
Full Monty, Chinese Style (07/28/2006) (Tianya
Club) Mind you, this particular item shows up as a front-page
recommendation of one of the most popular forums in China.

(in translation) There was a movie
titled The Full Monty in which certain American unemployed workers resorted
to strip-dancing to make a living. I am not interested in male
strip-dancers and so I have not seen that movie. Reportedly, that
movie is full of vulgar capitalist jokes and blind optimism, treating the
serious issue of unemployment as farce -- over here, we would have asked Liu
Huan to sing gloriously: "We only have to start over again."

Recently, I personally witnessed a Full
Monty incident for ten people unrelated to unemployment. It was like
this: Somewhere in Shandong, a blind rights activist has been charged with
some unusual crimes and placed under detention for six months
already. Recently, the court trial was to begin and a certain group of
people wanted to attend the trial and offer support.

On the night before the trial, the group
arrived around midnight and were immediately tailed by unidentified
persons. When they went to the courthouse early in the morning, they
were followed by cars without license numbers. When they arrived at
the courthouse, they took out their video cameras to film.
Immediately, a group of people who identified themselves as
"civilians" came up to seize the equipment Our videocameras,
cameras and mobile phones were seized. 110 arrived forty minutes
later, whereupon the "civilians" who took our equipment were
untouched while we were taken down to the police station. While we
were waiting for 110 to arrive, some local citizens told us that the
"civlians" were really local police officers. While waiting
at the police station, I spotted one of the "civilian" now wearing
a police uniform. The most funny thing was that the unlicensed
vehicles which followed us around were parked in the courtyyard of the
police station ...

The local police officers politely took our
statements and released us. We then proceeded to the village in which
the blind man lived. That was when the Fully Monty incident took
place.

In order to show our support, we wore
specially printed t-shirts with the head of the blind man in front (I did
not wear one because there wasn't one whose size was large enough for
me). At the entrance to the village, we were intercepted by forty to
fifty people. Under the direction of several people, they snatched our
t-shirts so that we were bare-backed. Then someone said that they
wanted to overturn our cars. So they were pushing hard while we
watched on the side. Suddenly someone ordered: "Stop
pushing! Let them leave quicly!" So we smiled and got into
the cars. Even though each car was packed with bare-topped men, we
were not angry as we only found this funny.

There was another episode that I must
mention. When we got to a place, I thought that I had lost my
direction. So I told someone in our car to get out and ask the people
in the unlicensed car behind us to lead the way to the expressway entrance
so that we can go back to Beijing. They were very happy and
immediately complied. They escorted us all the way out of the local
jurisdiction.

This whole incident has a lot of
significant aspects. Some people were struck by how the local powers
behaved like underworld gangsters. What kind of world is this?
But my personal views are different.

You have to know that this incident appears
to be a case in which we were robbed and we spilled a few drops of
blood. But those "civilians" were quite restrained.
They did not show any sign of being ready to punch with their fists, which
means that they have been sternly warned to be careful about employing
violence. Even when they made the Full Monty show of us, they were
quite constrained as they focused only on the t-shirts. Of course, we
did not fight back and we did not talk talk back.

The restraint against violence and the use
of plainclothes while on duty actually signaled that the authorities have
imposed self-restraints. In my usual terminology, this means that they
have castrated themselves.

This change means that the authorities have
basically abandoned the use of public powers and symbols (such as police
uniforms) to oppress people in whatever manner that they see fit. By
abandoning this approach, they have admitted that they are morally
defeated. From doing these things under the sunshine, they now have to
work like underground moles.

... The establishment of legal processes,
rule of law and human rights basically follows this path: civilian
resistance -> violent oppression -> more resistance -> open
oppression to hidden oppression -> social progress. Following the
self-castration of the authorities due to social pressure, the space is
gettling larger and the degree of progress is bigger. From this
viewpoint, this Full Monty show had been quite worthwhile.

[081] Destroying
The Evidence - Part 1 (07/28/2006) (Oriental Daily; no link)
38-year-old male named Choi used his camera-capable mobile phone to take an
upskirt photograph of a 16-year-old girl yesterday in the MTR around
5pm. Another citizens observed his actions, followed him and notified
the notice. When the police officer demanded to inspect the mobile
phone, Choi quickly took out the SIM card and swallowed it. The police
officer took Choi back to the police station to "assist in the
investigation."

[080] Senior
Citizen Abuse Time (07/28/2006) (Ming
Pao; Ming
Pao) It is the time of the year (Ghost Festival) when charity
organizations distribute Peace Rice (平安米)
to senior citizens in Hong Kong. Since someone died last year during
one of these mini-riots, these events are receiving more attention now.

Yesterday, the distribution point was at Carpenter Road Park, Kowloon
City. Starting from 3am, senior citizens began to join the
queue. Early in the morning, there was a yellow-alert rain storm in
which the nearly 1,000 people already present were drenched.
At 9am, the organizers began to distribute the chips with which the the rice
can be claimed later. During that time, some people attempted to join
the line again after getting their chips and were recognized and yelled
at. Although the rice distribution would begin until 3pm, some people
were worried and staked out their positions again. When the rice
distribution began, some people saw that the rice package had been reduced
from the previous 5 kilograms to 1 kilogram (worth less than HK$10). A
total of 2,400 packages were distributed.

Grandma Liu came from Sze Wan Shan at 5am and got into the A1 zone to be
among the first ones to receive the rice. After almost 10 hours in the
line, she was unhappy with what she got: "I was in the line the whole
day and I only got this small bag of rice. It is not even enough to
feed a cat! (排了一整天，才得到這麼一小包米，餵貓仔都不夠啦﹗)"
and "I was in the line for many hours. This is worse than being a
beggar! (排左咁多個鐘，仲慘過做乞丐)."
Then she threw the package on the ground and the reporter had to pick it up
for her.

More excitement came when the organizers brought out some unannounced gifts
(Peace Noodles) and tossed them into the crowd. Here are the photos of
the ensuing mini-riot/wrestling match.
Could this have been done better? Possibly. The Kowloon City
Civil Affairs Bureau commissioner was present and said that he was satisfied
(but he refused to give an evaluation). Meanwhile, one senior citizen
knew who to blame: "The worst is xxx (最衰都係××)"
where xxx is the name of a Legislator that the newspaper did not name.

[079] About
This Section (07/27/2006) I have contemplated dumping the
Brief Comments section on several occasions, but it is still alive.
But what is the idea? After all, this is driving people crazy when
they want to link to a specific item because the readers will be forced to
accept all the comments of the month. So let me tell you what this is
really about. In Jimmy Lai's essay Facts
and Prejudices, he asserts that "People in Hong Kong don't care
about what happens in Taiwan, and vice versa." Now I happen to
think that there ought to be more communication among mainland China, Hong
Kong and Taiwan. If I placed everything as blog posts with clearly
delineated regions through the RSS feed, I suspect my readers will
selectively filter for what their interests are and ignore all else. I
consider that to be unforunate. The present format of the Brief
Comments section prevents that. It forces you to come here and read
through each item, which is short enough for you to grasp the central idea
behind each item. As you scroll down and read each item, you will
retain something about what is going on in places that wouldn't interest you
on a standalone basis. This is the reason why you are being tortured ...

[078] Super
Girl = Spiritual Pollution (07/27/2006) (Huash.com via Wenxue
City) At the Guangzhou 20->10 elimination round of the
Super Girl contest, the contestant Sun Yixin (孙艺心)
pulled up her skirt to expose her white underpants, and this action raised a
storm. Here are the photos:
What do you think? Should the death penalty be imposed? Please
note that Sun Yixin's explanation was that she was originally scheduled to
appear in white leather shorts but the director made her wear a camouflage
skirt on the outside. Unfortunately, this created the wrong impression
that she was yanking up her skirt to display her white underwear. Now
she risks being PK'd by the State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television (SARFT).

[077] "I've
Got No Culture" (07/27/2006) (Ming Pao via 一知半解)
The following is excerpted from the statement of Pang Chi-ming, the owner of
Subculture Press which had a booth at the Hong Kong Book Fair.

[in translation] I have been in
publishing for eighteen years. Finally, I got my first "banned
book." At this year's Hong Kong Book Fair, the new book
"Dirty Old Books" at our booth was ordered off by an official from
the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority ...

"Dirty Old Book" contains the
study results of a Hong Kong cultural researcher who spent more than three
years on local adult magazines from the 1960's and 1970's. The book
noted the historical development of erotic magazines, the social development
of control, the needs of the readers and hence the cultural tastes and
quality of Hong Kong. Basically, this is a cultural study.

The author cited numerous cases, which had
to illustrated by the photos that appeared in the old magazines. For
example, "the covers did not always use pretty girls, but they
sometimes used scary middle-aged women," "the first appearance of
uncovered nipples" and "the unprofessional poses of the local
models." We covered up these photographs by using blurs first and
then flowery patterns on top -- we did not mean to circumvent the law and we
only want to make sure that people recognize that we were not selling
pornography.

... The official who banned the "Dirty
Old Book" at the book fair said that female bodies were shown in the
book with only the sensitive spots being covered. This was not good
enough for him, and so the book had to be removed!

As I stared at this official, I was
reminded of what Chip Tsao said: "The peculiarity of Hong Kong's
inspection system is such that the kids here will someday be shocked when
they see a the nude body of a real female because she has are no square
spots!"

As I was explaining to the official about
the position and intent of the book, he interrupted me and articulated
clearly: "You don't have to say anything else. I've got no
culture ... (「你唔使講咁多，我係無文化嘅 )."

Wow! Which place in this world would
apppoint someone with no culture to handle cultural matters?? Well, Hong
Kong does that!

[in translation] I did not expect
that after I expressed some personal thoughts on the war in Lebanon last
week, I would be lucky to draw the attention of the Israeli consul general
in Hong Kong.

I did not intend to offend anyone, but the
non-stop assault against the civilian infrastructure of another nation, the
destruction of civilian homes and the displacement of innocent civilians
from their homes truly pained my conscience. My instinctive feeling
was that this was conducting terroristic attacks in the name of
anti-terrorism!? Or should this be called humanitarian intervention or
friendly fire?

First of all, this war began when Hizbollah
kidnapped two Israeli soldiers from inside Israel near the border in the
hope of making a swap for Lebanese political prisoners. These types of
border clash can be mediated and negotiated through the international
community, or at least the problem can be restricted without large-scale
warfare. According to reports, the bombardment of the first few days
were not directed against the Hizbollah military forces but instead against
civilians. This has to lead people to speculate whether Israel's true
goal is to use the opportunity to destroy a defenseless small county with
utter indifference to the lives of the innocent civilians?

The international community and media have
no sense of right or wrong. When the Israeli said that they would
begin a land war in southern Lebanon, the media such as CNN described the
invasion as "entering South Lebanon." These types of word
games are intended to mislead the public.

Oh! What kind of world do we live in?

Although Hong Kong is tiny, it is still a
cosmpolitan city. We held the WTO conference here last year and we
claim to embrace globalization. Although I know that I am just a small
Hong Kong reporter without much influence, I must make a statement on
matters of right and wrong. From afar in El Salvador, I check the Hong
Kong newspaper websites. The reports on the war in Lebanon are no
longer international headlines, as everybody continues to chase after Mrs.
Chan or other trivia.

I hope that Hong Kong society does not
become numb and ignorant! Starting a war will not bring security and
happiness to Israel, as Israeli citizens are also being attacked. Why
should those lovely Israeli children become victims for no apparent
reason? It is the good citizens from both sides who are being held
hostage by the extremist politicians!

The Israeli Consulate did not literately request the Hong Kong Economic Times to stop me from writing anything ridiculing them. I think the inmedia has misunderstood the incident. Before?
Yes. But not Hong Kong Economic Times. It is Hong Kong Economic Journal. They asked the HKEJ not to give me
a platform for my articles. Since I still write for both the newspapers, it is obvious that my freedom of expression has been respected. I feel grateful to the chief editors of HKEJ and HKET, and I enjoy writing for them.

2. Anti-Isreal? In what way? I also critize China and Hong Kong . Am I anti-China or anti-Hong Kong?¨How convenient it is to give someone this label which by itself is a tool to create sterotyping and conceal the truth.
Please do not fall into this trap.

[075] Sidekick
Breaks Through (07/27/2006) In issue #855 (July 27, 2006) of
Next Magazine, Hong Kong blogger Sidekick
gets two-thirds of page 48.
The introduction: "Sidekick can be
said to be a veteran in the Hong Kong blogosphere. Although her blog
age is only just over two years old, her blog "feats" are
formidable with more than 430,000 visitors already and more than 700
subscriptions (1/4 from mainland China and Taiwan)." Here is her
most recent encounter with the Great Internet Firewall:

[in translation] ... But in Sidekick's "glorious
history," the best bit was when her blog was blocked on the mainland
last year. Sidekick built her own blog in March last year. After
publishing essays on June 4th and July 1st, her blog was blocked by the
Great Internet Firewall so that mainland netizens cannot visit it
anymore. "The mainland firewall will automatically censor
sensitive words such as "June 4th" or "July 1st" or the
names of national leaders. If your blog has no mainland
visitors, it is unlikely to be be blocked. But since I frequently
leave comments on mainland blogs and I know many mainland bloggers, I was
banned," Sidekick said.

But Sidekick has figured out a
countermeasure. "This year on June 4th, I captured all the words
and made them into pictures which I posted on the blog. This got
around the firewall (editor: currently, the mainland firewall can only check
words but not pictures. This is the blindspot of the software) and I
am lucky that nothing has happened so far."

The remaining one-third of the page goes to
another famous Hong Kong blogger 知日部屋, who focuses on Japan under the slogan:
"Instead of idolizing or hating Japan, it is better to get to know
it." That is another one of those exceptional blogs that the
outside world does not know enough about.

[074] Jimmy
Lai Finds EastSouthWestNorth (07/27/2006) In issue #855 (July
27, 2006) of Next Magazine (pages 142-143), Jimmy Lai begins his column with
a quote from the EastSouthWestNorth blog as forwarded to him by the Next
Magazine publisher Yeung Wei-hong. Here is the quote:

[Administrative Note]
(07/13/2006) It is travel day again (16-hour direct fight from
New York City to Hong Kong). Blogging should return to normalcy after
that. This trip is a reminder that if I hold a regular day job in New
York City, then this blog could not exist as it stands because I would not
have the time and I could not feel the pulse of the people and place.

Why did I say that? I was thinking
about that last day before I left. That morning, I got out of the
apartment and I took the Third Avenue bus to go to the office. I was
very delighted that the Metro-card reader on the bus was broken and I got a
free ride. I got into the office and it was an all-day rush to make sure
that everything was taken care of before I leave. I copied all the
computer files that I will need from the network onto my USB drive. I
spoke to everyone to make sure that everything is covered. At the end of
the day, I hurried over to a sister company because they needed some advice on
their methodology. There was a thunderstorm outside so I had to dash
quickly. We talked for a couple of hours and my throat was getting dry
from all the talking. Then I went out with three former colleagues to have dinner in
Chinatown. It was a big meal but relatively cheap. By the time I got home, it was 10:30pm and I was in no mood
or shape to worry about Anson Chan vs. Regina Ip, or the developments in the
case against President Chen Shui-bian's son-in-law, or the new Chinese media
law on suddenly breaking incidents. Those things were too remote
and disconnected from my reality at that moment. No, I went to bed instead. To keep the blog up,
I thought that I will have
to live and breathe China.

Jimmy Lai's essay goes on to some other
things that should be of great interest and I hope to translate the essay
shortly. Specifically, he points out the reason why pan-Asian media have
been disappearing is that the notion of Asia is remote and detached for most
Asians (that is, people in Hong Kong really don't care too much about what
happens in Cambodia and so on), and this was obviously related to the quoted
statement of mine above. The most important media nowadays are local media.

Jimmy Lai's essay becomes very interesting
with respect to what happened in a meeting right before I picked up the
magazine. Among other things, we were talking about Jimmy Lai's essay Blogs
and Newspapers. But more importantly, we were also talking about a
different model for pan-Asian new media which will overcome the detachment and
remoteness of the mainstream media. And this will not be empty talk as
we intend to implement this model very soon.

[073] Grounds
for Divorce (07/26/2006) (Apple
Daily) I thought I have seen it all until this one. In
1999, female Chang met male Ke, who was confined to a wheelchair.
Chang found Ke to be witty and progressive and decided to marry him over the
objections of her family. Since Ke was confined to the wheelchair, the
wedding received media coverage at the time as the couple kissed during a
ceremony presided by then Kaohsiung mayor Frank Tse.

Chang recently filed for divorce on these grounds:
- Ke had lied about his hospital job since he actually ran a lottery store
(although he would actually play lottery himself)
- Ke has the habit of spitting everywhere including the floor, wall and
bedsheets at home, and so Chang was busy all day with the cleaning
- Ke wants to keep Chang awake at night and uses his elbow to nudge her all
night. When Chang was pregnant and very tired, she went to the park
one night because it was the only way that she could get a good sleep
- Ke has to be attended to when he needs to relieve himself, or else he
would either urinate on the spot or he threatens to eat his own feces (威脅要吃大便).
Their friends at the church would not visit them at home due to the stench.
- In 2002, with the mediation of friends, Ke signed a promissory note that
he won't nag his wife or disturb her sleep, or continue his filthy habits,
or waste money or tell ties. But he did not keep those promises.
- At a subway station, Ke hit his own head until the pregnant Chang got down
on her knees in public
The judge has granted a divorce in this case.

[072] The
Writing On The Wall (07/26/2006) (Apple
Daily) Photo of a wall in Tainan showing President Chen
Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming playing monopoly.

[071] The
Number of Deaths in the Tangshan Earthquake (07/26/2006) (China
Times) When the Tangshan earthquake happened, nobody knew the
true number of deaths. Three years later, Xinhua reporter Xu Xuejiang
attended a national conference on earthquake and learned that the true
number was 240,000 or so. Xu wrote a report and submitted it to the
conference secretary general for approval for the purpose of publishing the
truth and squash all the rumors. After some persuasion, the secretary
general consented.

After the report was published, the Earthquake Department called up Xinhua
and complained that this contravened the spirit of the Central Government,
especially with the deletion of "interference of the system of
actions" as being the reason for the scope of the disaster. At
the time of the disaster, the Central Government was controlled by the Gang
of Four and they had concealed the scope of the disaster while blaming
things on factionalism for political motives. After reviewing the
matter, the Xinhua editorial staff supported Xu.

Xu Xuejiang said that it was absurd and risible to report good news and hide
bad news, to the point of hiding casualty figures. The lesson from the
delay in reporting the Tangshan figures should have been learned. In
2003, SARS broke out and the government once again hid the truth and created
huge discontent. Xu said that old habits are hard to break quickly, as
many department and local cadres are still stuck with the idea of covering
up the truth for certain reasons. Therefore, the Tangshan lesson
should be brought up to remind people.

(in translation) ...
The transformation of the ancient capital is a very important matter.
Yet one after another strange-looking building appeared in the name of
'modernity' while totally ignoring the organic relationship between the
buildings and the humanistic surroundings. The people in the
"surrounding area" and the experts who care about the
"surrounding area" had no influence on the policy decisions.
The 'arbitrariness' and opulence of such a huge but soulless engineering
project occurred due to the opaqueness of the decision-making process, the secretiveness
of the budget and the absence of monitoring. To invest all of the
nation's efforts into a sports meet that lasts 16 days while sacrificing all
the other urgent programs is because the concept of 'nation' supersedes all
other values. As to the costs and benefits of this effort, or the
long-term interests of society, or the sacrificing of the interests of
certain groups, these things cannot be doubted or criticized, because China
is still a country in which basic policies cannot be doubted or criticized
...

The author of the
Internet essay "The Olympic Gold Medal Trap" used this formula to
estimate the costs: in 2004, China won 32 gold medals at the Athens
Olympics. How much did each gold medal cost? At the 1988 Olympic
games in Seoul, the Chinese sports authorities had a budget of 1 billion
RMB. At the 1992 Barcelona games, the budget increased to 3 billion
RMB. At the 2000 Sydney games, the budget was up to 5 billion
RMB. By extrapolation, China probably had to spend 20 billion
RMB over the four years leading up to the Athens games. If the final
result was 32 gold medals, then each one costs around 700 million RMB.
"This is the most expensive gold medal in the world."

The author asked:
"When the overseas Chinese started Project Hope to build Hope
elementary schools in the impoverished areas, it only cost around 200,000
RMB to build a school. If it costs 700 million RMB for a gold medal,
then that sum could have been used to build 3,500 Hope schools. If
each school accommodates 100 students, then the money could have helped 35
million school children to become literate. If the 20 billion RMB
spend for the Athens game were used for education, there would be 100,000
Hope schools for 10 million children. If you were in the leadership
position in charge of the 20 billion RMB, would you choose 30 Olympic gold
medals or education for 10 million children?"

This formula is
obviously terribly flawed, but the underlying problem is quite true.
How did the 32 gold medals come about for China? What is the
price? Up to now, the Chinese sports system is based upon a national
economic plan in which money is invested for elite training methods.
The government used taxpayers' money to run various levels of schools and
almost all the medalists come from this system. ...

What the people of
Taiwan can learn from the Beijing Olympics is that the global vista and
vision of the Chinese come from their dedication and persistence and their
seriousness and commitment on building up the infrastructure. But,
sorry, this is not about Taiwan applying for the 2020 Olympic Games or
sending 20 children to learn soccer in Brazil. That type of
"Great Wall" aesthetics is not what Taiwan needs. In this
regard, it is the smallness, backwardness and focus on the grassroots common
folks in Taiwan that should give food for careful thought by the grand
Beijing.

A 75-year-old woman on welfare was driven to provide sexual services for $20 because she could not get by on her dole payments, a magistrate was told.
Wu Wei-geen, who earlier pleaded guilty to soliciting for an immoral purpose on March 20, yesterday refused to accept a probation report that recommended she receive psychiatric and psychological treatment.
Wu told Chief Magistrate Patrick Li Hon-leung that she knew her actions were wrong, but committed the crime to help make ends meet. She insisted she did not need any medical attention.

From the Chinese-language newspapers, here is
what Wu actually told the chief magistrate:

- (Ming
Pao) "大家中國人，你放過我吧，我這麼老﹗"
(We're both Chinese. You spare me. I'm so old.)
- (Apple
Daily) "我 尊 重 你 都 希 望 你 尊 重 我 ， 中 國 人 要 幫 中 國 人"
(I respect you so I hope you respect me too. The Chinese must help each
other)
- (Apple
Daily) "我 唔 睇 精 神 心 理 醫 生 ， 我 都 有 人 權"
(I am not seeing a psychiatrist. I have my human rights)
- (Apple
Daily) "英 女 皇 先 至 有 精 神 病 ， 佢 伊 拉 克 殺 咁 多 人"
(The Queen of England is the one with a mental disease. She killed so
many people in Iraq)
- (Sing Tao)
"我同你講人權，英女皇殺好多伊拉克人，英女皇先有精神病，你幫英國人，你受賄﹗"
(I'm talking to you about human rights. The Queen of England has killed
a lot of Iraqis. She is the one who is mentally ill. You are
helping the Englishmen. You were bribed."
- (Sing Tao)
"我無精神病，你唔好冤枉我﹗英女皇殺好多伊拉克人，你幫英國人同我作對﹗"
( I am not mentally ill. You must not treat me unjustly. The Queen
of England has killed a lot of Iraqis. You are helping the Englishmen
against me)
- (Sing Pao)
"亞曾（特首曾蔭權）做多善事，想辦法幫窮人"
((Chief Executive Donald) Tsang should do more good things and try to help the
poor)

According to the Chinese University of Hong
Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific studies poll of 820 respondents:

(SCMP) Those backing Mr Tsang for a second term fell from 75.7 per cent to 67 per cent over the past month. Those opposed rose 2.9 points to 14.4 per cent. About 19 per cent said they did not know. Although Mr Tsang still enjoyed relatively high public support to serve another term, the level of this backing continued to drop, the institute said.
Support for his re-election dropped even further, down 3.3 percentage points from May to 53.6 per cent this month if Mrs Chan joined the race.
But Mrs Chan's support fell by 2.7 percentage points to 24.5 per cent. Those who said they "don't know" doubled to 14.6 per cent, the institute said.

At the Hong
Kong Media Workers Forum, the following was posted: "(in
translation) Chinese University of Hong Kong public opinion poll: If
"Sneaky Tsang" and "Unfaithful Chan" were to run for the
Chief Executive at the same time, who would you support? Tsang was
supported by more than 50%, but 3% less than in the previous poll.
Chan had been getting more exposure lately but her support fell instead into
the 20's and 2% less than in the previous poll. While it was logical
for Tsang to have come down due to the negative criticisms, it was suprising
for the very active Anson Chan to fall down! The Apple Daily column
can continue to masturbate as the Anson Chan bubble burst on July 1st and
her public support has been falling for a formal bankruptcy."

Now I really don't care about the above. Rather, I was amused by the
following response to the post: "屌臭你全家!土共左仔!你老母含家仆你個爛臭街咁撚多野講我指撚住你個尻頭話尻緊你個撚樣丫！仲望喎你條懵尻!!屌你老豆呀,屌你老母呀,屌你仚家呀,屌你個仆街屳家富貴!!!屌到你屎眼合唔埋個西又反撚曬!!!頂你個胃,你就有胃出血,該你死!!都唔能知你係乜鳩 --
水!你地d仆街仔出來仲就死鳩撚晒喎!!!!仆你個臭能街正一死淨種毛又無條又要扮撚哂野死低ｂ白痴仆街仔ｏｎ撚鳩痴撚線食蕉啦你打你老母屌西
.食撚屎啦你老母!!屌臭你呀!!!戇鳩鳩!!!俾我堉你六七你全家."

I choose not to translate this long stream of obscenities. I will only
note that this is a serious flaw of the forum format, as the original
argument is usually brief and the response is gainsay by invectives.
This particular saying is not even interesting because it has appeared
multiple times already and is merely being recycled by copy-and-paste.
However, this is what passes as public discourse on a forum for professional
media workers. This is not to say that this forum is useless. In
fact, the forum is very useful but one has to filter out a lot of irksome
noises.

[067] Gold
Finger (07/25/2006) In mainland China, "金手指"
(gold finger) is the term for simultaneous transcribers (see Hao86)
who are in heavy demand at conferences because they can transcribe the
speeches and discussions by flicking their fingers on a real-time basis. In Hong Kong, "金手指"
(gold finger) is the term for "informant, informer, tattler, tattletale, rat,
tipster, canary, fink, snitcher, squealer, stoolie, stool pigeon." In Hong Kong sub-culture, triad gangsters are idolized
and a "gold finger" is a despised figure.

Teenage internet spies recruited by copyright enforcers have tracked down 1,200 "seeds" -- data sources used for illegal downloading using the BitTorrent system -- since they started work under a pilot scheme in February.

Commissioner of Customs and Excise Timothy Tong Hin-ming said the work of the 800 youngsters had enabled all but 1 per cent of the illicit files to be removed or invalidated. The rest were being investigated.
Mr Tong announced the figures as he launched an expanded Youth Ambassador Against Internet Piracy Scheme, under which 200,000 youngsters aged between nine and 25 would become "gold fingers" on the lookout for potential BitTorrent seeds of copyright works, including movies and music.

The spies come from 11 youth uniformed organisations such as the Scouts. Each will be given a password to log on to a customs webpage when they spot a seed.

(New
York Times) Dare Violate a Copyright in Hong Kong? A Boy Scout May Be Watching Online.
By Keith Bradser. July 18, 2006.

Emily Lau, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said that the government should release more details of the program to the public for debate before proceeding, and should be particularly wary of having children report offenders to law enforcement.
Public education I support, but to get young kids to do the reporting? she said. I feel uneasy about it.

Christine Loh, the chief executive of Civic Exchange, a policy research group, said the government program would have to be managed with particular care because of its faint echoes of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, when children were encouraged to inform on their parents and other relatives.

Well, here is the first casualty of this
Cultural Revolution. (The
Sun) An anonymous forum poster asserted that a Youth Ambassador
named Su set up her personal blog to offer free downloads of pirated
material. Thus, she was enabling and entrapping others to commit crimes
by running her own illegal site. That post generated a huge response
from the public who called her "two-faced person (雙面人)"
and "public criminal (公眾犯人)"
and doubly guilty for knowingly breaking the law. Here is a screenshot
of the exposé on her (via 知日部屋).

[066] The
Missing Sentence (07/25/2006) It should be tautological that
whatever was censored in newspapers will be unknown by definition. But
that was once upon a time and today we have blogs. The following was
posted by Southern Metropolis Daily columnist Lian Yue at this personal MSN
Space blog (Lian
Yue's Eighth Continent). In the published article, the
paragraph in bold was deleted. However, Lian Yue went ahead and
published what he wrote in its entirety on his immensely popular blog.

(in translation) The public service
examinations are presently hotly contested in China and nobody can deny the
high standing of public servants. But there are also people who are
saying the opposite. According to recently released statistics
released by Xinhua, the average income of Chinese public servants is 15,487
RMB which is slightly lower than the 16,024 RMB of all urban Chinese
employees.

On July 17, Hangzhou Daily News published a
news report that led to a strong opinion response: According to a research
study led by Zhao Guoqiu, the director of a certain hospital in Hangzhou,
public servants feel more isolated and insecure than the masses.
Therefore, the study recommends that society should offer a reasonable
psychological support system for public servants, so that they can
"hold a lawyer in the left hand and a psychiatrist in the right
hand." All the media reports emphasized this conclusion -- public
servants not only receive lower pay, but they can be damaged easily and
therefore public service jobs have few takers. Of course, this is
vastly different from the public perception.

Thus, some observers drew this
conclusion: at this critical moment for the reform of wages for public
servants, the purpose of these press releases is to provide a rational basis
for wage increases. Therefore, these types of news about the
"dire situation" of public servants will continue to come out in
the form of numbers and expert opinions. These comments may seem to
denigrate public service work, but they will actually help out
immensely. Indeed, if they don't get more pay, they won't have the
money to hold a lawyer in the left hand and a psychiatrist in the right
hand.

Lian Yue also noted that when his essay was
published at NetEase, it drew almost 4,000 comments. As of July 24,
NetEase has deleted the essay and the comments. Lian Yue commented:
"It seems that somebody was unhappy."

P.S. There was another deletion in the
last paragraph: "For the sake of national interests and progress, I hope
that the public servant wage reform would result in a wage reduction, even if
it is only 10 RMB per month. This small sum will inform the public that
the public service system is not just a system of special privileges in
which wages only go up and never down. It will be worthwhile."

[065] MBA
Techniques for Managing Mistresses (07/24/2006) (The Sun
via ChineseNewsNet)
Former deputy secretary of Xuancheng city (Anhui province) Yang Feng (楊楓)
was recently put on trial for receiving more than 700,000 RMB in
bribes. During the trial, it was revealed that Yang kept eight
mistresses whom he managed using modern corporate management skills (namely,
he appointed a "top mistress" to supervise all others), but his
scheme collapsed when his "manager" turned him in.

According to mainland's Family magazine, Yang Feng became deputy mayor of
Xuancheng city in 2001. His wife was living in another city, but he
did not lack female companionship. In March 2003, Yang went to Beijing
to study in an MBA program for senior cadres in Beijing and got to know a
32-year-old woman named Zhou. At a dinner, Yang Feng said that he was
a scholar who did not like to entertain and was very much in love with his
wife. When Yang returned to Xuancheng, he received a special deliverly
package in which a letter enclosing rose petals from Zhou declared her love
for such a righteous man. So Zhou became Yang's mistress.

Later Zhou was enraged when she discovered that Yang already had six other
mistresses. However, Yang said: "In the history of China, which
exceptional man did not have multiple mistresses? However, you are my
number one." Zhou was moved to tears. Yang also told her:
"I only have one body that they fight over. I will let you manage
those women and you can help me resolve any conflicts."

So Yang and Zhou analyzed the various mistresses and used the knowledge of
MBA theory and human resource managerments to schedule the mistresses: Zhou
was ranked number one, followed by Zhang, Li, Huang, Lin Chen and Liu
respectively. Yang also classified the mistresses according to their
preferences: money, looks, power and jealousy. So Zhou proposed to
allot each according to their best abilities: one managed public relations,
another managed a company, and so on.

For management purposes, Zhou gave Yang six mobile phone numbers, one per
mistress. Under Zhou's expert management, everything worked out fine.
...

In 2004, Zhou made the mistake of introducing the bar girl Qiu to
Yang. He was infatuated with the pretty and capable Qiu and then
neglected Zhou. When Zhou found out that she was being replaced by
Qiu, she went to see Yang and slashed her wrists in front of him. He
ignored her and demanded Zhou to hand back the money that she was managing
on his behalf. Zhou then went to the Anhui provincial party
disciplinary committee. Since she knew all the details of the bribery
schemes, this led to the downfall of Yang.

What would the Harvard University Business School say?

[064] Your
Head On A Blog Mob's Pike (07/23/2006) I just have to quote
this from Kevin Drum's Political
Animal blog. At issue is why a mob of blogs is dreaded by
politicians more than special interest groups such as NARAL or The Club For
Growth.

In our daily lives, we fear seemingly random violence (terrorism, kidnappings) more than we fear known threats (car accidents, bathtub drownings), even if the known threats are actually more objectively dangerous. Perhaps that's what's going on here. While a threat from NARAL or the Club for Growth is a known quantity that can be dealt with, no one has quite figured out what sorts of things might set off a blog lynch mob. If you knew, you could craft some clever plan to triangulate around it, but if you don't, you have to watch every word that comes out of your mouth, always in terror that you might say the one thing that gets them screaming for your head on a pike.

Or something like that. I'm just riffing here. But if this is true, it means blogs aren't really a long term threat after all. Someone just has to figure out how to predict their behavior better. And  trust me on this  someone will.

[063] The
Tangshan Earthquake (07/23/2006) I regret that I had been in
Singapore for the past few days and consequently missed some of the
presentations at the Hong Kong Book Fair. Here is Ming
Pao on one of the sessions that I wish I could have attended, even
though one extra body would not have changed the last sentence in the
report.

(in translation) "Over the past
thirty years, I have not changed how I felt about the great Tangshan
earthquake." In Qing Gang(錢鋼)'s
heart, this is still the greatest natural disaster of the 20th cenutry, with
more than 200,000 deaths and more than 100,000 injured. Yesterday at
the Book Fair, Qing Gang gave the talk: "Me and My Tangshan -- The
Thirtieth Anniverary of the great Tangshan earthquake." In his memory,
each incident may have been trivial and negligible, but the sum total became
a lively history weaved with blood and tears.

Qing Gang operated the screen
projector. He looked at each photograph and quietly recalled the
situation thirty years ago. Soon after the earthquake occurred, Qing
Gang rushed to Tangshan to assist. "Before I left, my mother told
me to look up the old family friend 'Uncle Jiang' and his family. But
at the time, Tangshan had been leveled and there were no road or direction
signs." Luckily, Qing Gang heard a familar voice in a hospital
and it was the Uncle Jiang that he was looking for!

"At the time, Uncle was wearing a torn
and filty t-shirt. I immediately took off my jacket and let him wear
it. Uncle would continue to wear it since." That happened
thirty years ago, but Qing Gang recalled it yesterday with certainty and
clarity.

"The military personnel who arrived at
the scene began digging with their bare hands until their fingernails fell
off." "The people who were waiting for help could not nothing
except to continue to wait ..." Such were the scenes at the
time. Apart from what the eyes can see, Qing Gang also remembered the
smells of rotting corpses and medicines. "Under the blinding sun,
the corpses were rotting. Tangshan was full of the pungent smell of
death." At the hospital by the river, Qing Gang could smell the
medicine even before he reached the entrance ...

Qing Gang's narrated story was shocking,
but there were only more than a dozen of so people attending his talk
yesterday, of which half of them were local middle school students, plus
tourists from Guangzhou.

P.S. A reader asked, Why are middle-school
school students and Guangzhou tourists interested in Qian Gang's talk? Here is the staff biography from the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong.

Qing Gang Best known for his tenure as managing editor of Southern Weekend, China's most progressive newspaper, Qian Gang is regarded as one of China's foremost investigative journalists. Qian was also a co-creator and executive editor of "News Probe," CCTV's pioneering weekly investigative news program with nearly 20 million viewers. Qian collected historical documents for Chinese Boy Students, a book and five-hour documentary series on 120 young Chinese students sent to universities in the United States by the Qing government in the late 19th century. He is also the author of "The Great China Earthquake," an investigative report on the 1976 earthquake at Tangshan in which 250,000 people were killed.

Thus, in Guangzhou, there are still people
who admired Qian Gang and his contributions before Southern Weekend was
castrated.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong middle schools, "The Great
China Earthquake" is prescribed as a textbook, and is one of the students'
first detailed introductions to their mother country. This choice is
obviously criticized by some as presenting a 'negative' image of China.
But there are others (including myself) who disagree vehemently and regard this
type of book as much more effective in promoting love for the nation and its
people than those 30-second television ads ever will. That is why I wish
I could be there.

[062] Police
Uncle (07/22/2006) The deep character flaw of the Hong Kong
entertainment industry is the lack of initiative and creativity on a
grand-scale. Yes, it is true that there are some periodic
breakthroughs. But if there is huge hit out of nowhere, then the herd
mentality is to stampede and imitate the genre until it is thoroughly
exhausted and moribund. Examples are the martial arts movie era,
Japanese television drama series, etc. In the aftermath of the global
hit Bus Uncle,
there is now Police
Uncle.

This story has hit the front cover of The
Sun.
The principal character is a plainclothes police officer who went to a bar
to investigate soccer gambling. At the beginning, he is heard to
curse: "I told you to stand up! F*ck your mother!! I am not
f*cking scared of gangsters! ... F*ck your mother! If you are smart,
you shut up! You think that you are the boss! You want to be Wah
Dee!" When the subject still did not cooperate, he yelled:
"Maybe you don't have air-conditioning at home and you want to come
down to the police station!" Even after he had the situation
under control, he continued to say: "Illegal gambing! Brazil is
f*cking losing the game! F*ucking lost until they are silly ..."

The quality of this 1:12 video is quite poor, and this really explains why
the original Bus Uncle was so exceptional. Meanwhile, the search for
the next XXX Uncle goes on. Knowing what the popular demand is for
this genre, I predict that the next big hit will be cynically staged for
commercial exploitation ... after all, many people even thought Bus
Uncle was staged.

[061] The
Seven Men In Black (07/22/2006) If you read China
Post about the bail hearing for President Chen Shui-bian's
son-in-law, you will have no idea what the Chinese-language media are really
concerned about. If you go to Taipei
Times, you will get no text but the hint is in this photograph -- it
is the man in black on the left. The man has six other companions not
shown in this photograph. The big question is: Who are the seven men
in black? Enquiring minds want to know.

When President Chen Shui-bian's daughter Chen Hsing-yu showed up at the
hearing, she was accompanied by four aides assigned by the government for
protective services. She needed them to fight through the media
crush. President Chen Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming is no
longer eligible for government aides, and so he would have to fight through
the media throng relying on his own devices. On this day, he showed up
with seven men in black!

(Apple
Daily) The seven men dressed in black suits and white shirts
with ties formed a phalanx to let Chao Chien-ming get out of his house into
his car. Then the team followed Chao by car while barring the media
pursuit cars from coming near. At the Taipei courthouse, the seven
formed a human wall to let Chao enter. When the hearing was over, the
seven men in black surfaced again to escort Chao home. The
intelligence department is concerned that the seven men are gangsters and
that will do even further damage to the image of the first famly.

According to an Apple Daily reader, the organizer was a Four Seas Gang
leader who owns a hotel and the action was led by one of his lieutentants
who brought six hotel workers.

Chao Chien-ming's lawyer has an alternate theory: he has no idea who these
people are but suspects that someone hired them to smear Chao's reputation
and he asks the police to investigate.

P.S. Later reports identity the men in black as being connected to the
Bamboo Union gang, which is known to be fervently
anti-Taiwan-independence. What gives?

(in translation) Among Taiwan's
traditional media, news reporting and opinion commentary are getting mixed
up due to lack of understanding about journalistic professionalism.
This has done great damage to public trust in the media. Presently,
the online newspaper websites are carrying blogs written by the editorial
staff. This will not save the media empire but will destroy any
remaining public trust.

The newspaper industry has been
encountering hardship recently as the Internet has given a two-pronged
attack on the survivability of the newspaper media. On one hand, young
readers are getting their information more often from the Internet.
The print media no longer has the monopoly on information, and the number of
their readers have declined instead of growing. On the other hand, the
advertisements that the newspapers depend on have slowly drifted to the
cheaper and more convenient Internet. In the United States, in all
cities in which craiglist.org is present, the newspapers lose money because
most of the advertisers on craiglist.org did not have to pay and they reach
a bigger audience. These two factors create a vicious cycle in which
there are fewer subscribers and fewer paying advertisers. Things are
only going to get worse for the newspapers.

Under these circumstances, the print media
businesses around the world look for creative answers. Some of the
traditional families have sold their businesses (for example, the Los
Angeles Times was sold to the Chicago Tribune group). Some of them
started multimedia empires, such as the Murdoch empire of newspapers,
television, movies and websites. Some of them entered the Internet
business; for example, The Wall Street Journal set themselves up as the
largest newspaper in the United States by virtue of its online
subscribers. But no matter what they do, none of them would sell out
their public trust like the Taiwan traditional newspapers are doing.
The advantage of the traditional newspapers is that they have established
trust for their editorial products over the long term. A New York
Times report is superior to several tens of thousands of nonsensical blog
essays because the readers trust the New York Times brand.

Reporters and editors can have their own
peculiar ideas and that is their personal business. But once they
write them down inside their newspaper, these represent the position of the
newspaper. In Taiwan media, it is not unusual to see reporters insert
their own opinions into their reports, and this is wrong.

Suppose the truth of an event can be
different depending on how the reporter writes it. In the long term,
then, will anyone trust any news report anymore? At the esteemed Wall
Street Journal, the publisher writes open letters to the readers through the
course of the year and more than half of them emphasize that the newspaper
is trying to separate opinion commentary from news reporting. The
mission of news reporting is to provide the true facts whereas opinion
commentary is intended to spread ideas. It is professional media
management to separate the two!

The traditional newspaper people in Taiwan
had some good principles, but the new generation of managers have these
pecuiliar notions that are selling out any remaining public trust.
Reporters and editors are now allowed to write blogs every day in the belief
that they can retrieve the lost readership or sell more ads. But when
the readers can see the blog posts with the clearly delineated positions and
then they see the news report under the reporter's name, can they still
believe that the report is fair and objective?

Worse yet, the reporters' blogs are
presented in the name of the newspaper. Some of them are pro-green and
others are pro-blue. Does this media entity have a position? If
the reporter goes overboard on something, the readers may mistake it for the
position of the newspaper and then propagate it.

[Administrative Note] I am
traveling today to Singapore for the Fourth Chinese Internet Research
Conference. This will be a 'small circle' conference at which I will get
to meet people like Rebecca MacKinnon, Isaac Mao and Xiao Qiang in person for the first
time. I will return on Sunday. Website updates will be
unpredictable depending on Internet access and availability of time.

Update: (07/20/2006) I am in Singapore on the Nanyang Technological
University campus. The conference begins tomorrow morning. The
worst part about being away from Hong Kong? No Apple Daily because my
Hong Kong subscription does not cover overseas access! And I'm not
away often enough to justify getting an overseas subscription.

[059] You
Are What You Watch (07/20/2006) The following table comes from
the Survey
& Policy Research Institute (San Jose State University) from a
survey of 891 Californian adults interviewed June 26-30.

Statement

Fox News
Viewers:
Positive

Fox News
Viewers:
Negative

Non-Fox
News Viewers:
Positive

Non-Fox
News Viewers:
Negative

Direction of country

57

33

34

58

Bush approval on Iraq

60

39

21

72

Bush approval on Economy

65

27

27

61

Bush approval on Terrorism

74

23

36

56

Bush Overall Approval

59

29

25

66

Bush tells the truth

64

29

27

63

Iraq war made US safer

54

28

21

48

Iraq war worth it

54

33

25

69

So are the media out there to present
objective information in a fair and balanced way? Or are they out to
reinforce pre-existing attitudes and opinions?

[058]
This Will Not Appear in Taipei Times (07/20/2006) (Apple
Daily (Hong Kong) by Bu Da-Zhong (卜大中),
the principal writer for Apple Daily (Taiwan))

(in translation) Some pro-green
scholars cannot stand it anymore and signed a joint public statement to ask
President Chen Shui-bian to resign. This created a resonance that was
much more powerful than when the pan-blue camp tried to recall Ah
Bian. On July 17, Ah Bian was supposed to host a dinner at the Grand
Hotel with all the DPP and government senior officials in order to relieve
the pressure from the pro-green scholars. But many green legislators
elected not to attend because they didn't want to be known as having been
patted on the head and pacified (摸 頭 招 安)
by Ah Bian. So Ah Bian had to cancel the event. It is easy to
imagine Ah Bian's embarrassment.

The pro-green scholars' demand for Ah Bian
to step down was more powerful than any recall or no-confidence effort by
the blue camp and more damaging to the DPP. The various attempts by
the blues to dump Ah Bian were unconvincing. No matter whether Ah Bian
was good or bad, corrupt or clean, the blues would have opposed him
anyway. There are no rights or wrongs and that is why the blues lack
trustworthiness and legitimacy. But now the pro-green scholars have
collectively demanded Ah Bian to quit, and it is hard to use those excuses.

All those greens who supported Ah Bian
during the election are embarrassed and disappointed and feel that they were
let down; they are also scorned at by the blues and feel bad. But Ah
Bian thinks that he can still hijack these people to continue on. That
is why these people are now angry and want Ah Bian to resign. They
hate Ah Bian for being so confident that these pro-green people have nowhere
else to go because they cannot turn to the blue camp. This is a
terrible feeling and that is why they have come forward to demand Ah Bian to
resign.

Over history, whenever political leaders
run into crises, they usually seek to divert attention in order to
survive. A common ploy is to create a crisis from the outside.
But manipulating nationalism is dangerous and can blow up. The 1982
Falklands War is an example. At the time, Argentinian regime of
Galtieri was shaky with severe economic inflation and social
stability. In order to retain political power, the government inflamed
nationalism and attempted to take over the Falkland Islands of the United
Kingdom. This led to a war in which Argentina was defeated badly and
Galtieri was ousted.

President Chen is now backed into a corner
and he is capable of doing terrible things. After meeting with the
pan-green bosses several days ago, Ah Bian indicated that the constitutional
reform and the renaming of Taiwan are among his goals for the next two
years. Why does he want to do these things? First, this is in
exchange for the support from the post-independence bosses; second, this is
to consolidate the deep-green base; third, this is to take revenge against
the anti-Bian elements by making them angry and hurt; fourth, this is to
infuriate China and the United States and create an international crisis
which will divert attention away from the corruption cases and the pressure
for him to resign. The price will be horrendous. Without even
having initiated it yet, the stock market index has dropped by 170 points
yesterday.

Ah Bian knows that there is no chance that
the constitution reform and renaming of Taiwan can get through the
Legislature. The 10% public support for these two items will not allow
him to do that, but he still insists on moving forward. This is a
manifestation of the fear of a trapped animal which intends to treat the
people as straw dogs. Still, we can still use our imagination to look
ahead.

The constitutional reform and the re-naming
of Taiwan seriously go past China's bottom line (because they mean Taiwan
independence by law) and it will provoke a severe response from China.
The United States will take this as a betrayal of Ah Bian's formal promises
and take action to sanction Taiwan. The stock market will drop under
3,000 points, the economy will be ruined, society will be in chaos,
political storms will be turbulent and the people will be scared. Then
Ah Bian can properly declare a state of emergency, impose martial law,
arrest opponents, cancel all elections including the 2008 presidential
election ...

Alright, this is where we will stop and we
don't want to visualize how China will invade Taiwan by force with the tacit
approval of the United States ... the independence bosses and the deep-green
supporters of Ah Bian often think in self-reinforcing close-minded
groupthink and believe that they are right. This causes Ah Bian to
think that he is absolutely right and then the tragedy gets out of hand.

Too many tragedies in history occur because
people are locked into close-minded loops. Right now, Ah Bian's small
close-minded group is moving in that direction. We must prevent this
tragedy from happening before the point of no return and that would be for
Ah Bian to resign for the sake of Taiwan.

[057] It
is Tang Wei (07/20/2006) (The
Standard) Taiwanese director Ang Lee has cast Cannes best actor winner Tony Leung, Chinese-American pop star Leehom Wang and mainland newcomer Tang Wei in his upcoming spy thriller Lust, Caution, his assistant said.
Lust, Caution, based on a short story by famed Chinese writer Eileen Chang, is about a group of patriotic students who plot to assassinate the intelligence chief in the Japanese-backed Chinese government during the World War II era.
Hong Kong's Leung, who won best actor at Cannes for In the Mood for Love in 2000, plays the intelligence official Mr Yi, while Tang plays the Chinese student Wang Jiazhi, who seduces Yi to pave the way for the assassination.
Central Academy of Drama, majoring in directing, resembles Taiwanese sex symbol Shu Qi. She reportedly took part in a beauty pageant and appeared in a TV series and a TV film.

Little is known, eh? How about this photo of Tang Wei's model pose for
the movie (via Hainet)?

[056] Baidu
vs. Sohu (07/19/2006) (China
Daily, July 14, 2006) Baidu, the world's biggest Chinese search engine service provider, closed its Enterprise Search Software Department on Monday, dismissing approximately 20 employees, China Business News reported today.
Employees in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen were told on Monday afternoon that they were fired. "We had no idea that our jobs were even in question, and no one explained anything to us," said some of the fired workers still in astonishment.

And then the war began (Guangzhou Daily via MediaChina.net,
July 18, 2006). Immediately, there were numerous reports on websites
about the layoffs, including "recordings of conversations among the
former Baidu employees." Baidu issued a press release that stated
that Sohu.com had engaged in ignominous behavior, had ignored requests from
Baidu to remove the faked recordings and therefore Baidu does not preclude
the possibility of suing certain malicious websites.

On July 17, Sohu.com made a barbed response. According to Sohu.com,
the so-called "malicious slurs" were fictional. Instead,
Sohu.com covered the Baidu layoffs as a regular news item and it has never
received any letters from any Baidu lawyer about any faked recordings.
Sohu.com turned it around and asserted that Baidu is going public in order
to divert attention away from its layoff crisis and to damage its principal
local competitor -- Sohu.com's Sogou. Sohu said that it was angry and
disgusted with Baidu and does not preclude the possibility of seeking legal
redress.

But on the afternoon of July 17, the Guangzhou Daily reporter noted that
Sohu.com had pulled the Baidu news item down to a less prominent spot and
also removed certain numbers that Baidu had charged were false.

Brooks applies the fear stimulus (in a gentle way, admittedly, but then this is PBS.) He warns us that "they" (meaning, presumably, the armies of jihad) are "on the march" -- neatly conflating in one plural pronoun Shi'a and Sunni, religious and secular, Lebanese politician and Palestinian nationalist and Iraqi insurgent and Al Qaeda terrorist. They're all on the march, like the enemy storm trooper in an Ingsoc
propaganda
poster:

It had no caption, and represented simply the monstrous figure of a Eurasian soldier, three or four metres high, striding forward with expressionless Mongolian face and enormous boots, a submachine gun pointed from his hip. From whatever angle you looked at the poster, the muzzle of the gun, magnified by the foreshortening, seemed to be pointed straight at you.

This is commentary only in the same sense that a front-page editorial in People's Daily on the counterrevolutionary capitalist conspiracy, circa 1965, counts as commentary. It does demonstrate, however, the neocon skill at constructing grand meta-narratives out of carefully selected pieces of reality, glued together with lies, distortions and apocalyptic rhetoric.

Brooks is actually one of the most effective practioners of the art because he's usually so low-key about it. He doesn't rant -- or rather he does, but typically in a mild-mannered, reasonable tone of voice, without the piercing shrieks and flying specks of spit found on the talk radio shows or the right-wing extremist blogs. Think of it as the talking head show approach to doublethink.

That doesn't, however, make it less dangerous -- just the opposite, in fact. When an establishment drone like David Brooks starts sounding like the speaker at a five-minute hate, but on Quaaludes, it shows that the neocon version of Minitrue is pulling out all the stops.

[053] Taiwan
by the Numbers (07/18/2006) (China
Times) (803 adults in Taiwan interviewed by telephone on July
17. Random sample drawn from telephone directory and then using random
numbers on the last two digits)

- Relationship with President Chen Shui-bian and DPP? Chen should
resign from DPP 32%; DPP should expel Chen 16%; 25% Chen should stay in DPP.

[052] TV
Sports (07/18/2006) (Xinhua forum via Boxun)
The following notice appeared on a CCTV 5 sports program: (in translation)
"Direct Broadcast. Year 2006. Pacific Rim Bodyweight
Championships. Men 77 kilogram class."
So how do we choose the champion among a bunch of guys all weighing 77
kilograms?

[051] An
Elegy on the Death of the Kunming Newspaper Price War
(07/18/2006) Previously, the newspapers in Kunming (China) had engaged
in a price war during which annual subscription rates were reduced to 20 RMB
per year, less than the 100 RMB paid for used newspapers (see Comment
200607#004). Is market competition a good thing? Not so,
or so decreed the Propaganda Department. Here is a partial translation
of a post by the respected journalist/blogger Zhang
Rui (张锐).

The so-called rational bottom line is that
the sales price of a newspaper cannot be less than the price offered by
waste paper recycler. During the bloody Nanjing price war, the vendors
shipped the newspapers to the recycling centers as soon as the newspapers
were delivered to them because the sale price for a newspaper was 0.20 RMB
while the recyclers were paying 0.24 RMB. Even unpopular newspapers
were favored and the vendors would order 500 to 600 copies because they were
making money.

During the Nanjing price war, the
'circulation' of the newspapers jumped, but the advertisers were the fools
for investing their money to subsidize the newspapers. In the Kunming
price war, it is even worse because the war was conducted for annual
subscriptions instead of retail sales and the effects will be
longlasting. This was a matter of life and death.

More than twenty days after the Kunming
price war began, the Propaganda Department has imposed a halt ...

In my view, the government order as well as
the academic condemnations were unnecessary. I am not someone who
wishes for chaos under heaven, or a human suicide bomber, or a youngster who
wants to shock the world with his words. I say this for two reasons:

First, in the Chinese newspaper industry,
the problem is not too many but too few market-based actions; the problem is
not too little government management but too much annoying
intervention. In any kind of competition, pricing is the most
effective method. Price wars are seldom seen, but they are the most
normal way. Media moghul Rupert Murdoch is the most famous and
experienced expert.

Second, there are too many (and not too
few) newspapers in China. Cut-throat price wars are the normal results
when some newspapers become unprofitable and are elimnated in the
marketplace. This is the essential step through which the newspaper
industry moves towards normalization and improvement. When a newspaper
closes down (such as the former Independent Evening News and Central Daily
News), I feel an emotional regret and a rational cheer ...

[050] In
Praise of Stewart/Colbert (07/18/2006) To publicize the book
of collected commentary essays from Southern Metropolis Daily, columnist
Lian Yue (连岳)
wrote this essay.
First, he provided a description of The Daily Show (by Jon Stewart) and
The
Colbert Report (by Stephen Colbert) which may not be familiar to people
inside China.

[in translation] ... I spent so much time
to write about these two American television talk shows because (1) I am a
fan of theirs and (2) I believe that their absurdity contains certain true
goals for media. Except in a 'lawless' place such as America, such
programs are probably doomed anywhere else. They will always be
regarded as alien by the mainstream, but their antagonistic pose against the
authorities should be the direction and path for current affairs
commentary. They will never be friends with any president and they will
never want to be friends with those in power, even if these people are
sometimes right. Current affairs commentary is a form that is full of
"biases." It takes a stand, it has a tendency, it is not a
judge, it is not the conciliator standing aloof and it is always the friend
of the weak, even if these people are sometimes wrong. I don't care
about anyone else, but this setup fits me well and it is my path.

Actually this is helpful towards current
affairs commentary. You think about it: those in power will always
have all the help. They have numerous advisors and they are able to present
the affair perfectly with the help of these people. If you fall for
them and applaud, wouldn't you be embarrased to death later when the truth
comes out? Those who are weak may exaggerate their hardship and
helplessness, but hardship and helplessness exist for them after all.
If you speak on their behalf, you will probably be right. From the
angle of the balance of information, the powerful do not need your help for
they can produce enough favorable information about themselves whereas
nobody will even pay attention if the weak threatened to kill
themselves. Therefore, I want to become a biased person.
Sometimes, I will pretend that I am neutral and help to mediate; but I will
stick out my hand secretly and squeeze hard on the dick of the powerful
during the chaos (趁乱掐一把强者的鸡巴).
If my essay is poorly written, then I must not have been biased enough.

Anyway, I mean to say that as a veteran
columnist at the Southern Metropolis Daily, I am neither objective nor
neutral. In fact, I have a tendency of following the wayward path of
darkness. But even with an author such as myself, Southern Metropolis
Daily is willing to offer me column space each week to express my views and
they even pay me a fee. They have also collected my essays into the
book "The Age of Hot Words." This shows that Southern
Metropolis Daily is accomodating diversity. There are many viewpoints
that you may not agree with, but that is the unique proposition of Southern
Metropolis Daily. By comparing the various "extreme"
opinions, the readers can derive the largest value on any affair and then
efficiently reach his own conclusion. If a reader can only read
viewpoints that he agrees with or things that he knows already, then that
newspaper must be a brainless piece of waste paper.

[049] The
TDC Effect (07/17/2006) (FTV via Yahoo!
News) In the matter of the Taiwan Trading Corporation insider
trading case, Chao Chien-ming, the son-in-law of President Chen Shui-bian,
had done nothing right at this time. It does not matter what he does
because the media will shine a negative light anyway.

Ever since Chao got out on bail, whenever he appears, the media want to know
whether there will be a divorce or separation. No matter how
well-tempered one might be, one is bound to be angered. When he gets
mattered, the media say that he know how to self-reflect. When he
raises his chin, the media says that he is arrogant. Even his walking
gait was subject to criticism.

The media also attacked his companions. When his aide carried a Sogo
shopping bag, the media said that he was insensitive. When his younger
brother showed up with the 'map' bag to carry the bail money, the media said
that he was flaunting his wealth. Frankly speaking, most ordinary
citizens buy name brands too.

When Chao goes to see his sons at the presidential residence, the media
criticized the president for letting him come and suggested that the
son-in-law should be exiled like Toyotomi Hideyoshi did. Conversely,
suppose Chao did not go to the presidential residence to see his sons, he
would have been called a cold-blooded dad. At this point, Chao can do
nothing right on account of the Taiwan Trading Corporation case.

More about the 'map' bag (FTV via Yahoo!
News):
By the way, the 'map' bag which came from an exclusive Italian supplier is
sold out in all of Taiwan. The bag measures 50 cm in length, 30 cm in
with and 23 cm in height. The NT$10 million in bail came in 10 bundles
of 1,000/2,000 bills and weight more than 10 kilograms, which was easily
carried by this canvas bag with a map on it. The bag used to cost
NT$8,000 or more, but it is presently commanding a premium price at auction
websites.

[048] Blogger
Gets Rich (07/17/2006) Wang Xiaofeng is the blogger
previously known as Massage Milk and considered the best in China in the
news/commentary category in 2005. Here he writes about his blog
ad:

Four days ago, I added a Google ad on my
blog. Today, I checked and found out that I have earned US$2.94.
That's quite a bit. At this rate, I should be able to buy a color
television set at the end of the year. Is this the profit model for
bloggers? Anyway, the money is there for the taking. I won't be
rich with it, and I won't be poor without it.

But I welcome people to take out ads at my
blog. Based upon the current statistics, there are about 2,300 links
to my blog. The daily number of visits is more than 10,000, compared
to the 3,000-4,000 at my previous blog. I have now found out that this
number is inaccurate (based upon the income from the Google ad).

But I think that the ad effectiveness here
should be good. You think about it. A fashion magazine has a
circulation of about 10,000. Even if you say that each magazine copy
has 10 readers, that would just be 100,000 persons in total. My blog
has more than 300,000 visitors per month.

So if anyone wants to sell something (such
as someone's special album or some medicine to cure feeble-mindedness), you
can try advertising over at my blog.

[047] The
Middle East Is In Flames (07/17/2006) And so what do the
Chinese think? This is hard to gauge since neither Hong Kong, mainland
China or Taiwan have public opinion polls on this topic. I will
translate one blog post here (from 聞.見.思.錄),
and I note that it represents one (and only one) outside view of the raw
information (and the information is very RAW in the other sense of the
word).

The continuous so-called bombardment of
Lebanon by Israel is "the right to self-defense" according to some
people. But even if soldiers were kidnapped, or navy ships bombed, or
civilians killed or injured by rockets from armed forces not belonging to
any nation, something like this
should not have happened even as responsibility is assigned to the enemy,
right?

Sorry, even after I read this kind of news
report and this kind of photographs (I will only supply the links
down below because they are too revolting), I have only posted a question in
the title. My anger will not be mentioned.

[046] The
Night Wolf Interview (07/17/2006) (Boxun)
This is an excerpt from the interview of journalist Li Yuanlong written by
his lawyer Li Jianqiang (who was procured by the Chinese Independent PEN. This
interview was made before Li Yuanlong was sentenced to two years in jail for
"inciting subversion" through the publication of four essays
including On Becoming an American
Citizen in Spirit.

Lawyer: Is there anything you have to
say about the allegations in the indictment?Li: Yes. I wrote the essays. I admit it. But I did not
send them out through the hotmail account. The email was sent by my
son. He did not know what was in it. I wrote these essays out by
hand first and then I entered them into the computer. I don't know how
to use the computer too well. I wrote these essays in order to
practice typing. When I saw my essays entered into the computer and
then published, I had a sense of accomplishment. That is why there
were the hand-written versions and the electronic versions.

Lawyer: In terms of your thinking, what
made you write these essays?Li: There are three reasons. First, I am a journalist for a party
newspapers. I write lies and clichés all day and I feel
repressed. I want to be able to say what I think. Second, the
reality inside China is about inequality of wealth, corruption of officials,
unjust administration of law, restriction of speech, etc. This may be
feel that Chinese society should be transformed. As an intellectual, I
have the obligation to criticize and expose these phenomena. Third, I
was able to obtain some information from overseas through the
Internet. I was also influenced by certain liberal intellectuals and
my thinking has changed.

Lawyer: How were you found out?Li: My first essay was "On Becoming an American Citizen in
Spirit." I did not know how to use a computer yet. My son
helped me to send it out. Four days later, I was published at the
Yibao website. I found out that it was published under my original
name Li Yuanlong. I was afraid that I had revealed myself. So I
asked a friend to call the editor to change the name to Night Wolf.
Later on, all the essays were published under Night Wolf or Yehaolang.
I guess that was how the National Security people found me.

Lawyer: I believe that you misunderstand the law. Your critical
essays of the Chinese Communists did not violate the law and they do not
constitute subverting the nation. To say that your essays fabricate,
distort, exaggerate the facts, incite to subvert the national government and
to overthrow the socialist system is unfair and lacking in factual
foundation and logical basis.Li: Yes. They said that I fabricated that the 80 million people
died under the Chinese Communist regime and tanks rolled over and killed
students during the June 4th incident. I obtained that information
from the Internet. They said that I fabricated it. They should
produce the true authoritative material. They did not have any
comparisons. So how can they say that I made it up?

Lawyer: You can say all that in court. We will plead a case of
"not guilty" in accordance with the law.

[045] Chupa
La Paleta (07/16/2006) Josh Gerstein (New
York Sun) has the goods on the Donald Keyser case. The
opening: "The narrative about a veteran State Department official smitten with a younger Taiwanese intelligence officer reads like a John le Carré novel.
However, the story  replete with romantic encounters and cloak-and-dagger tradecraft  is laid out not in a book, but a little-noticed 43-page court filing submitted last week by federal prosecutors in Virginia."

Here is the juicy bit:

"The court filing goes into unusual detail about two episodes in which FBI agents observed the pair in a car with Ms. Cheng "in the front passenger seat leaning across towards the defendant with her back facing upward and head below the line of observation."
Prosecutors contend that after one of the couple's allegedly-intimate vehicular encounters, Keyser called Ms. Cheng on her cellular phone and said, "The food was good. The wine was good. The champagne was good, and you were good."

Prosecutors said Keyser "became infatuated" with the young Taiwanese agent, writing in an e-mail, "Having my arm around your shoulder, your head resting against my shoulder, and then on my chest, your hand in mine for a couple of hours while you were in Dreamland' was more than ample compensation."

The court filing indicates that Keyser acknowledged kissing and embracing Ms. Cheng. He said that on at least one such occasion Ms. Cheng was nude, but he denied the encounter included any sexual act.

... While she was allegedly involved with Keyser, Ms. Cheng was engaged to and reportedly married a British man, Christopher Cockel, who served as the Washington correspondent for an English-language Taiwnese newspaper, the China Post. The government said Ms. Cheng's other relationship added to the government's "concerns regarding her motivation for engaging in an intimate relationship with the defendant."

Not very juicy? Too matter of
fact? We can always add the illustration from Apple
Daily:

[044] "Taiwan's
Trash"? (07/15/2006) Since the daughter and son-in-law of
President Chen Shui-bian are staying away from the media, media attention will
have to fall upon whoever is available. In this case, the current
media star would be their housekeeper Elder Sister Ah Ching ( 阿卿嫂).
She is apparently quite willing to speak to the media, and therefore has
been described as the 'family spokesperson' (in the absence of any official
spokesperson).
Life has not been kind to Elder Sister Ah Ching either. She was
rumored to have provided a dummy account for her boss's inside stock
trade. Since she had been shown on television, she is a well-recognized
figure. A few days ago, a pedestrian saw her in the street and called
her "Taiwan's trash" (台灣的垃圾).
(FTV via Yahoo!)
Her response: "我只是吃人家頭路，不是垃圾."
(I only work for someone. I am not trash.)

It has gotten to the point where a male comedian has been doing parodies of
Elder Sister Ah Ching on television (FTV via Yahoo!;
TVBS via Yahoo!).
And when Elder Sister Ah Ching did not show up for
work yesterday, her non-appearance was a media story (Apple
Daily).

The idea that the name of a person would
determine his/her fate is quite familiar to the Chinese people. We
thank our ancestors for having invented several thousands words for us, so
that the giving of names becomes an art. When married to statistics,
this becomes a science.

Recently, a Shenzhen transportation company
allegedly refused as a matter of policy to employ drivers whose names
contained the words 勇
("yong" meaning valiant) or 猛
("meng" meaning fierce). The reason was that from a
statistical point of view, these two words occurred most frequently among
company drivers who got into accidents.

Now, if the words "yong" and
"meng" were really bad for drivers in China, there should not be
many left by now since most of them would have died in the line of
duty. But nevertheless many of the survivors so far have drifted over
to this particular company in Shenzhen to the point where a statistically
significant number of them got into accidents. So what is special
here? The drivers? Or the company?

By the way, there is another matter of
'commission' with the employment agency of that company. According to
information, if you pay enough, you can still get hired even if you have
"meng" or "yong" in your name. So what else is
special here? Another quick way to make a buck from people with common
names?

[042] Your
Mouth Hurt My Hand (07/15/2006) (Ming
Pao) At a 43M mini-bus stop in Chai Wan (Hong Kong Island),
one man was smoking in line and the man behind him whiffed away the
smoke. The first man felt insulted and said: 撥乜呀撥，成個女人咁
(What are you whiffing? You're like a woman). Then he blew smoke
right into the second man's face. The second man said: 我又冇鬧你，你做乜鬧人，撥下都唔得
(I am not cursing you out so why are you cursing me? Why can't I
whiff?) But the first man continued with a barrage of abuse. The
second finally said: 乞兒
(Beggar!) and was punched in the mouth. The police came. Both
men claimed to be injured and were sent to the hospital. The
smoker claimed a hand injury while the other claimed a mouth injury.
But for the fact that no video was taken, this could have become a second Bus Uncle
affair. There were approximately
30 people on the line at the time, but none was willing to become a
witness. So did this event ever happen?

[041] Western
Weekend (07/14/2006) For me, the ESWN blog is a source of
wonderment and bewilderment. Much of the reputation of this blog is
that it is a 'translation blog' that brings Chinese-language mainstream
article and Internet forum posts to English-only readers on a
near-real-time-basis. That's neat, but why do some of the
Chinese-reading public inside China regard this as a top brand name inside
China? Why should they care?

A case in point is this post at the Laohekou
forum inside China. This was a complete post of the English-language
ESWN post: The
Case of Gao Yingying. Now this was a translation of a Southern
Weekend article that everybody in China could read anyway (and the ESWN post
links directly to it). Why didn't the forum poster link directly to
the original Chinese-language post anyway? Here is one comment: "楼主真逗，搞个金山快译都能出一份英文报纸，这是不是英国的西方周末？"
(in translation) "The poster is a tease. Why would you post an
English translation that can be obtained through a machine translator.
Doesn't this become the Western Weekend newspaper from the United
Kingdom?" That is quite correct. For a primarily
Chinese-reading audience, that would have been the logical thing to do, but
an English-language translation was posted instead. Why?

We can speculate about the reasons.

One, this case is an affront to any person's sense of justice. So it
is good to see someone sharing that sentiment and going through the effort
of translating the entire article (note: without any further political
agenda-pushing) for the English-only reading world. This is about
certain universal values.

Two, this case may be falling upon deaf ears inside China, but international
opinion (again, in the original Chinese statement without political
agenda-pushing to push the interests of 'foreign subversive forces') may
bring justice closer for this case.

[040] R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
(07/14/2006) There is no need for me to recount the evidence that the
mainstream media still treats blogs with suspicion as sources of
information. I will be the first one to say, Who can blame them?
After all, not all blogs are trustworthy and some are more (or less)
trustworthy than others. Conversely, not all so-called mainstream
media are trustworthy either. So I regard the issue as having more to
do with "established brands" rather than the mainstream media/blog
dichotomy.

As I am obviously someone who would be attenuated to what the mainstream
media have to say about blogs, I cannot help but notice a certain use of
language. Generally speaking, the mainstream media are still
relucatant to quote: "According to the EastSouthWestNorth blog, (blah
blah blah ...)" This is because they and their readers will
probably become immediately suspicious when a generic blog is the primary
source (and I reiterate that I don't blame them either). Instead, I
note that there is a shift towards using a qualifier for the
EastSouthWestNorth blog. Here are two examples:

The use of "respected" and "excellent" meant that the
authors were willing to endorse the blog on account of its known track
record and reputation. This is partial satisfaction to the ESWN
blogger because some people out there respect him and think of him as being
excellent. His personal satisfaction will not be complete until the
qualifiers are removed -- that is, the authors think that all their readers
already recognize ESWN as excellent so that any reminder is redundant.
The ESWN blogger mutters: "That'll be the day ..." on that
score. Actually, he does not think and he does not want that to ever
happen, for the blogosphere would be much less interesting if fantasy,
heresy, heterodoxy, heterotipias, apostasy, paranoia and all that were
eliminated by self-censorship ...

[039] Public
Service Announcements (07/14/2006) (Southern
Metropolis Daily) (in translation) The number of cases
of electric cable thefts has been sharply increasing. According to
YCWB's survey, only about 3% of Guangzhou residents are aware that theft of
electric cable is a crime. Of the almost 1,000 survey respondents,
none were aware that the maximum penaly is the death sentence! ... From
this, I am thinking about the current situation of education of the common
folks and the use of public promotions and advertisements.
"Employing illegal laborers may result in a maximum sentence of five
years and HK$100,000 penalty," "To study is not just to get high
exam marks ..." These public interest television advertisements
from Hong Kong are well-known to us who live in Guangdong. By
comparison, the few crudely made public interest ads here are overwhelmed by
commercial ads. The only existing ones are the shop-worn "XX is
my home, XX is counting on everyone." It is impossible to find
any public interest ads that reach into the hearts of the people.
Meanwhile, there are many legally and morally challenged street signs that
assert: "All robbers will be shot at the scene" and
"Resolutely combat against XYZ." It is essential that we
produce high-quality public interest ads that resonate with the people in
the sense of enhancing public interests (such as making people aware of the
laws and providing civic education.

Yes, but how? This is not going to happen unless there is an
accountability system for advertising effectiveness. Even in the
commercial sector, the advertiser may demand proof of the "return on
investment."

[Administrative Note]
(07/13/2006) It is travel day again (16-hour direct fight from
New York City to Hong Kong). Blogging should return to normalcy after
that. This trip is a reminder that if I hold a regular day job in New
York City, then this blog could not exist as it stands because I would not
have the time and I could not feel the pulse of the people and place.

[038] The
Toughest Motherf*cking Interpreter in China (07/12/2006) As
cited by The
Shanghaiist, "two foreigners and their overprotective Chinese
interpreter ... fought off eight guys who apparently gawked at his clients
too long ... The interpreter came to table of eight and asked them to
apologize to the foreigners because the group had "stared at them too
long." The request was refused. The Chinese interpreter
relayed the refusal to the foreigners and then he came back to the table and
attacked and stabbed three of them, and continued to chase the other five
who were trying to escape, stabbing another four.

Whenever there is an event without
definitive evidence, the Internet goes amok. Wenxue
City has multiple versions of netizens who let their literary
imagination go wild. Here is the translation of the first version from
the Tianya forum (and I am too exhausted to do the others, but your own
imagination will probably do even better anyway).

I have not been back to Beijing for a
while. This time, I was back on business and I met some firends for
drinks at a restaurant in Xin Street in the western city district.
There were not too many people there, but there was one table of eight or
nine (including men and women) who had been drinking and were quite
boisterous. Occasionally, they smashed wine glasses and so they
probably had too much to drink.

At around 1am, three men (two whites and
one Chinese who appeared to be the interpreter) came in. The two
foreigners were refined in manner and showed a steady demeanour. They
ordered some BBQ dishes and a few bottles of beer.

At that time, the men and women at that
table began to yell 'Fuck you' at the foreigners and then laugh out aloud.

The three men ignored them as if they did
not hear anything. But that group of people went further and they were
saying even more awful things. The two foreigners said something to
the Chinese man, who then went over to the group and demanded an apology to
the foreigners. The group was arrogant and kept saying, "Fuck
your mother! Fuck your mother." The man turned around,
spoke to the foreigners for a minute and then they paid the bill and walked
out.

At that time, the group of men and women
started screaming "FUCK YOU" and "Fuck your
mother." They started to throw beer bottles and chairs at the
foreigners. We thought that the group was over the top, but we
couldn't stop them. Obviously, they had too much to drink after going
to some disco.

At that moment, the interpreter turned
around and rapidly headed towards the group. There was a flash of the
knife and one man was moaning down on the ground. The group reacted
quickly and picked up chairs and beer bottles to attack the
interpreter. We only saw the knife flashing. In less than one
minute, there were seven or eight men lying on the ground, and there may
even be a woman. Then the interpreter turned around. At that
moment, we saw that he had a foot-long knife in his hand. He went back
to the foreigners and they left unhurriedly.

My friend called the police. At that
time, I finally recovered my sense. The knife had been too fast.
Within ten seconds or so, almost ten people at the table were down while the
interpreter was untouched.

On the way back, my friend insisted that
the Chinese interpreter must have been a bodyguard for the two important
foreigners, because the man was too fast and professional with his knife
play.

I thought that those people were dead for
sure. But when I checked today's news, none of them were in mortal
danger. At that moment, we were even more impressed. The true
expert is not the mass killer; it is someone who maims without killing!

[037] The
Chin of the President's Son-ln-Law (07/12/2006) After 47 days
of detention, President Chen Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming has
posted bail of NT$10 million while awaiting trial. Actually, at this
point, it remains to be seen whether he is better off outside. Inside,
he had three square meals a day, a cellmate and some occasional long
interrogations. Outside, he is in the eye of the media storm where
everything little thing that he does is subject to second-guessing.

Chao's first act upon release was a public apology to his parents-in-law,
his wife and the people of Taiwan while insisting on his innocence.
This was duly recorded by the media.
Shortly afterwards, Chao Chien-ming proceeded to his workplace (National
Taiwan University Hospital) while being pursued by an armada of reporters,
who noted that the humility and contrition had totally vanished.
Instead, the media were presented by the famous 45-degree upwards
contemptuous tilt of the chin (see Apple
Daily and FTV).
The media also reminded people that Chao has been suspended from his job at
half pay, which is nevertheless more than NT$1 million per annum.
Would he prefer to be back under detention?

But here is a reminder of the current case against Chao Chien-ming. He
has not yet been convicted of anything. The prosecutor has filed
charges against Chao for inside stock trading and asked for a sentence of
eight years in jail. The court trial has not yet been held, and Chao
is on bail meanwhile. So Chao is innocent until the court finds
otherwise. Previously, Chao had been detained under the prosecutor's
presentation to the court that there is a 'likelihood' that Chao might
destroy the evidence in the case or tamper with other witnesses. There
is no charge for actual tampering. However, until the trial takes
place, Chao will apparently have to live through media hell.

[036] Taiwan
By The Numbers (07/12/2006) From China Times (via Yahoo!
News), here are the results of a public opinion poll conducted on
July 6-7 of 1,037 Taiwan citizens.

- 22% approved the job performance of President Chen Shui-bian while 59%
disapproved; 19% had no opinion. Previously, following the failure of
the presidential recall vote in parliament, the approval rate of the
president had bounced back from the historical low of 21% to 28%; the recent
developments in the SOGO gift certificate case has pulled that number down
again.

- After the failure of the presidentail recall vote, the Nationalist party
has announced that it will not attempt a 'no confidence' vote.
According to the poll, 62% approved, 12% disapproved and 26% had no opinion.

- DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun called for the formation of a Green Justice
League consisting of the DPP and TSU for electoral campaigns.
According to the poll, 52% thought that former president Lee Teng-hui and
the TSU should draw a line between themselves and the DPP and serve the role
as monitor instead. 13% thought that the TSU ought to collaborate with
DPP to fight the pan-blue camp. 35% had no opinion.

- If parliament were dissolved and elections were held today, 9% of the
voters said that they would vote for DDP candidates while 29% would vote for
Nationalist candidates. 39% said that it depends on the candidate.

[035] The
Democratic Basra (07/11/2006) From former Peking University
School of Journalism and Communications associate professor Jiao Guobiao
(via New
Century Net).

(in translation) "Democracy
cannot be exported" is an absurd theory that has been propagated on the
international political stage for several decades. But looking at it
now, democracy can not only be exported, but it ought to be launched with
guided missles. When the war in Iraq began, I predicted that within
three to five years, a newly born democractic Iraq will emerge from one of
the oldest cradles of human civilization.

On June 16, the British Prime Minister's
office announced that the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan will turn over
the security controls of the Al Muthanna province to the Iraqi forces.
It was announced that the Japanese Prime Minister will announce on the next
day that Japan is planing to withdraw the Japanese Self-Defense forces from
southern Iraq. The war began in 2001 and the government power was
transferred in 2006! I will now quote Jesus Christ's words:
"Mission accomplished!"

Never mind that the war in Iraq was started
in 2003 (and not 2001 as Jiao says), but there are alternate versions about
what is going on in southern Iraq today (you can google to your heart's
desire). For example, from Asia
Times (May 20, 2006):

Alarms are ringing in London that the
British army is being severely defeated in Iraq, as the city of Basra (where
its 7th Armored Brigade has been based since 2003) slips rapidly into
uncontrollable sectarian violence.

Basra has always been troublesome. From there, two uprisings were launched
against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 1999, only to be crushed with great force
by the currently imprisoned dictator. British officials, though, refuse to
accept the reality that since entering the city on April 6, 2003, they have
done nothing to eradicate sectarian militias, and violence is now exploding
in the southern Iraqi city, with nobody able to bring it to a halt.

Unrest escalated when a British helicopter was shot down in Basra on May 6
by a shoulder-launched missile, killing five British troops. British Defense
Minister Des Browne, learning from his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld,
played down the event, calling it "an isolated incident" that had
been "magnified" by the press. Coinciding with Browne's statement
was a roadside bomb that killed two British soldiers in Basra this Monday,
bringing the number of British deaths in Iraq since 2003 to 111.
British troops can no longer travel on foot, for fear of
ambushes, and have to use helicopters as taxis.

Basra, a predominantly Shi'ite city, has
been won over from the British by the rebel-cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The
young rebel gained the minds and hearts of the inhabitants of Basra when he
began his rebellion against the Americans, and then-prime minister Iyad
Allawi, in 2004. The people of Basra originally welcomed the British as
liberators, but the expression on everybody's face was: "Thank you for
what you did and for helping us get rid of Saddam. Now, when are you
leaving?"

Muqtada found an excited crowd willing to listen to his anti-Anglo-American
rhetoric in 2004-05 and was able to recruit members of the British-trained
Iraqi police force in Basra into his Mehdi Army, where they now serve as
undercover agents for Muqtada. By day, they officially patrol the streets
and gather information about logistics, and by night, they don the costume
of the Mehdi Army and pick fights with traditional enemies of Muqtada.

Today, Muqtada's pictures are plastered all over the streets of Basra, in
the police station and in the homes of private citizens, who pray for his
long life and good health, claiming that he is saving them from both the
occupation and the Sunni community. He has particular influence among the
city's poor and youth. A Basra under Muqtada's control, however, means
a mini-theocracy in Iraq. Alcohol is banned and veiling is becoming a must.
Women are warned to put the veil on when they venture outdoors in Basra to
avoid being harrassed by armed militias. Merchants who sold alcohol have
been executed or attacked.

... The Americans are speechless about
Basra. For long, there was a conviction in the occupying forces that Basra
was a relatively quiet and safe part of Iraq, because of the efficiency of
the British in keeping control. That impression has been destroyed, yet the
Americans cannot send troops to Basra. This is too difficult because of
their concentration in other parts of Iraq where the Sunni insurgency is
raging, and because the people of Basra would not allow it.

These days, it is commonplace to blame the
bad news from Iraq on the liberal media. But among those who believe
that democracy has arrived in Basra to the point that the United Kingdom,
Australia and Japan are ready to depart, how many of you will open a video
store in Basra? Or even just a foreign-language bookstore? If that
is not possible, then what kind of democracy is this?

[034] Lions/Pigs
At The Gate (07/11/2006) In the matter of the Red
Rubber Ball, there is a brand extension. At issue are the two
'lions' at the front gate of the Jianye government office. According
to the patriotic critics, the game operator Netease had recently sold some
shares to Japanese interests. Shortly afterwards, the two 'lions' were
morphed into two 'pigs' as shown in this photograph. This was
therefore the definitive proof of perfidy and treason.
A Netease administrator went back to the beta-test and retrieved a screen
capture of the same scene, and it appeared to be the same
'lion/pig.' The administrator also pointed out that no one can name
any source of information about the sale of any Netease shares to any
Japanese interests (and there is nothing wrong with international business
transactions in a globalized economy).
But no matter because the response was that an undated (and undatable)
screen capture only proves the perfidious nature of Netease in trying to
cover up.

I would ask people to step back and try to be a conspiracy theorist from the
other side. You are the chief of a right-wing Japanese
conglomerate. You have just invested something like 500 million RMB in Netease.
How shall you go about leveraging your new possession towards colonizing
China? Ah, yes, you are going to change the two 'lions' in the virtual
Jianye
government office of an online game into 'pigs.' Today, the lions;
tomorrow, China; the day after, the world ... This is completely out
of proportion with respect to any sense of reality. The only reason
that people can even think this way is that this game has assumed a
disproportionate importance in their own lives. The rest of the real
world cannot believe that the 'lion/pig' issue has any substantive
meaning. Get a (real) life!

[033] Recruiting
Goals (07/10/2006) The Hong
Kong Media Buster blog (in Chinese) specializes in detecting media
distortions. But who is busting the Hong Kong Media Buster? Here
is an example -- On July 10, this HKMB
blog post refers to a July 9 Apple Daily report on recruitment and
retention shortfalls for the US military. HKMB then links to this US
Department of Defense news release about how goals are in fact being
met.

Good job! Apple Daily has just been nailed for being lazy!
Except since when does anyone trust anything from the US Department of
Defense? It is not that they made up the accession numbers, but it is
for certain that they are spinning the interpretation of the
data.

How so? See this New
York Times article published on June 8, 2005. Previously, the
Army's target for May 2005 was 8,050 recruits. In early May, the Army,
with no public notice, lowered its May 2005 to 6,700. The New York
Times then reported that the Army is expected to report an actual number of
just over 5,000.

So why is the May 2006 goal 5,400? What isn't it 8,050? Maybe
you prefer to believe the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been
convincingly won and peace is at hand so that fewer soldiers are now
required. After all, your reading of news has recently shown nothing
but great things happening out there. Alternately, you have read only
horrible things happening out there, and so you may be cynical enough to
believe that these goals are movable according to the actual accessions
(that is, the goals are designed to yield percentages between 100 and
110). You can pore over the historical data at this page of Department
of Defense search results for evidence. And this is not even
getting into the issue of the lowering of qualifications (see The Dumbing-Down of the U.S. Army) and the raising of the upper age
limit.

Now, I am personally not opposed to spinning data in order not to encourage
the enemy and demoralize one's citizens. Psychological warfare is part
and parcel of the war against terrorism. But if there is a genuine
problem here, it should not be shut out of public attention with pure spin.

P.S. The following link was forwarded. Lawrence Kaplan at The National
Review:

Even by the degraded standards of everyday life in Baghdad, this report from CNN's Nic Robertson comes as a shock:

One international official told me of reports among his staff that a 15-year-old girl had been beheaded and a dog's head sewn on her body in its place; and of a young child who had had his hands drilled and bolted together before being killed.

... How can you win over the heart and mind of someone who sews a dog's head on a girl? Would more U.S. troops alter Iraq's homicidal dynamic? Not really, given that, on the question of sectarian rage, America is now largely beside the point. True, U.S. troops can be--and have been--a vital buffer between Iraq's warring sects. But they cannot reprogram their coarsened and brittle cultures. Even if America had arrived in Iraq with a detailed post-war plan, twice the number of troops, and all the counterinsurgency expertise in the world, my guess is that we would have found ourselves in exactly the same spot. The Iraqis, after all, still would have had the final say.

So this is alternate excuse for not
needing more manpower -- the Iraqis are going to kill themselves one way
or the other.

[032] Nessun
Dorma (07/10/2006) From Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot,
there is a famous aria Nessun Dorma,

[No one sleeps!... No one sleeps!...
Nor do you, o princess
in your cold room
Look the stars that tremble
with love and hope!

Disperse, o night! Set, you stars!
Set, you stars! With the dawn I will win!
I'll win! I'll win!]

So Italy and France played for the FIFA World Cup championship at 2am, Hong
Kong local time. That means that almost all of the newspapers had to
wait for the game outcome before going to print (and this game went into
overtime for a penalty kick shootout!). Here are the front pages that I can find on the
Internet. "Almost" was used here because there was an
exception -- Wen Wei Po published a front page story about how the
fishing harbor sampan tours will revive the Hong Kong south island tourist
business. Why does this one newspaper feel that it does not have to
conform to market demand? That may because its major financial revenue
is from ... ahem ... nevermind ...

[031] Famous
People, Famous Sayings (07/10/2006) An email came from a
curious reader who claimed to have google-imaged this blogger. Anyone
who attempted that would have gotten a lot of Excel graphs from my Latin
American website (www.zonalatina.com)
and that is really not terribly interesting to ESWN readers. There
will also be numerous references to that running club based in Central Park
in New York City. Now, I have characterized that running club website
as the precessor of this blog and that I had learned my craft over
there. That remains to be proven, of course. Here is one link: Famous
People, Famous Saying 1301-1400. You do not have to know any
of these people, but you can still read through these 100 snippets of life
in New York City within a social/athletic club during the period of
9/11/2001. This was obviously not about a social/athletic club, and it
wasn't even about New York City life. How much of ESWN can you discern
(not the specifics but the style)? Personally, I never thought that I
had to switch.

Photograph #1: From Contigua 3, Precinct 1019, Mexico State, this is
a photograph of the acta which contains the counts as made in public
and attached to the outside of the sealed ballot box. PAN 62; PRI 41;
PRD 188.

Photograph #2: This is a screen capture of the PREP database of the
Federal Election Institute for the same location. PAN 62, PRI 41; PRD 88.
Yes, 100 PRD votes has just been disappeared.
"This election fraud tactic is known in Mexico as estilo hormiga, or ant style. In an election this officially close, there is no question that, if undetected, small shovelfuls of votes diverted or hidden can make the difference in the national result."
There are more than 130,000 precincts around Mexico.

But the real reason why I love Mexican politics is the passion -- here are
the people protesting in Mexico City against the election fraud.

[029] Audience
Overlap (7/9/2006) With respect to How the Chinese Government Controls the Media,
I read this paragraph "In 2004, there were 74,000 rights protest incidents (this refers to incidents in which
more than 100 persons were involved in protesting) with the number of participants
estimated to be as many as 3,600,000." I wrote: " There are 74,000
incidents, which are defined to involve at least 100 persons. Therefore the total
number of participants must be at least 74,000 x 100 = 7,400,000, which is bigger than the
3,600,000 subsequently cited. Conversely, if there were 74,000 incidents and
3,600,000 participants, the number of participants per incident is 3,600,000 / 74,000 = 49
per incident."

A reader suggested that there may be duplications or overlaps with multiple
demonstrations at the same location. That's physically true but I
suggest that the degree of overlap is unknown. As illustration,
suppose that it was estimated that there were 2,000 demonstrators on night 1
and 2,000 demonstrators on night 2 in a certain rural village. What is
the overlap? 100%? 90%? 75%? or what? What is for sure was that nobody
was out there doing survey sampling.

In 2006, HKU POP conducted interviews with a number of marchers and asked
them whether they marched during the past three years. What are your
estimates of the percent overlap with each of the three previous years?

Here are the survey results (see HKU
POP): Among 629 respondents who were in the 2006 march,
- 78.9% marched in 2003
- 77.6% marched in 2004
- 70.0% marched in 2005

Were you close? Do you feel confident about estimating the overlaps
among 74,000 mass incidents in China?

[028] Shenzhen
TV Visits Foxconn (7/9/2006) While much attention is focused
on a small number of cases about freedom of speech in China, the big picture
may be slipping by without much public awareness in the western world.
A few days ago, I translated A
Chinese View of iPod City which was reported by the NetEase
portal. The following is a partial translation of a Tianya
forum post about Shenzhen TV's visit to the the
"blood-and-sweat" Foxconn factory.

The program began by saying that it (note:
the British media reports) is the competitors' way of attacking
Foxconn. The Department of Labor has not yet received any complaints
about Foxconn. Then the screen showed the tv crew entering the
factory. They refuted the British media's claim that more than a
hundred people slept on the same big bed. The shots showed that the
workers' dormitory had lower and upper bunks with electric fans. They
interviewed a worker who said that conditions are good and it is a minor
inconvenience not to have privacy in such a pubilc space. They
interviewed some female workers who said that the company does not have
forced overtime. When things get busy, they work 3 more hours per day
and that is optional for the workers. The interviewed workers looked
nervous and spoke unnaturally, so it is easy for people to conclude that
these were specially produced interviews in which the interviewees did not
express their true opinions. The program also interviewed black and
other foreign workers, who said that everyone is free to sue the company if
any law is broken. That is more lying with eyes wide open.

Shenzhen TV is a gcd (note: the
abbreviation for Chinese Communist Party) television station and Foxconn
pays taxes to the gcd. Based upon the size of the company, the amount
of taxes must be huge. So they are connected by their interests.
Shenzhen TV is lying with eyes wide open. They ignore the moral
conscience of media, they ignore social justice, they refuse to obtain
evidence, they do not look for the facts behind the news and they help to
cover up instead on behalf of the authorities. They show us the naked
shameless faces of hooligans.

By the time that I watched the program to
this point, the formerly kind and endearing television program hostess now
looked ugly and repulsive. I felt that she was a 100% bitch.

It is so hard to make progress one inch at
a time in this society!!

These dogs days, this world in which the
sun is covered up every day, when will they end!!

Did you think that this was what they are
posting at Chinese forums these days?

Now why is kind of talk being allowed? The commentator is the type known
as "angry youth," which is characterized as pure rage without a
plan. But the moment he/she says something such as "And therefore
the only way out is for we the people to join the Chinese Democratic
Party!" the sirens will go off ...

[027] The
Price of Death in Hong Kong (7/9/2006) (Hong
Kong Media Workers Discussion Forum) Many people in Hong Kong
are superstitious, and they would never move into an apartment unit or house
in which abnormal deaths have occurred (such as the triple suicide in Tian
Shui Wei).
The primary reason is the fear of haunting by ghosts. The fact that
many superstitious people won't buy such a house means that it will fetch a
lower price, assuming that there is any offer at all. In fact, some
banks will not offer mortgage for the most notorious addresses which they
believe may never be re-sold. What is the price differential?
About 20% lower.

In a recent court case, a customer filed a complaint against the real estate
agent for not disclosing the information before the sale, and the court
allowed the customer to withhold the sales commission (note: the sale had
been completed already and is therefore legally binding).

By the time you have read to this point, you must realized that the key here
is the availability of the relevant information to buyers, sellers and
agents. The Hong Kong government does not believe that it has the
responsibility of compiling a database of addresses at which abnormal deaths
(either murders or suicides) have occurred in order to promulgate
superstitutious behavior in the marketplace. There is a commercial
database where for several hundred dollars, you can get a check-up based
upon newspaper reports in that database, but this is not complete or
accurate.

If I may quote Sze Wing-ching of Centanet/am730:

(in translation) Personally, I am extremely
opposed to superstitution. I don't accept the notion of a
"haunted house." I don't understand why a house in which
someone died will no longer be fit to inhabit. I would like to
personally experience such a "haunted" or "ghost" house,
but I haven't had the chance yet. Will the various demons, ghosts and
monsters please drop by to visit so that I can see what you can do?

Those who don't believe in ghosts obviously
don't believe in haunted houses, but even those who believe in ghosts are
not in agreement about the definition of a haunted house. Some people
believe that the deaths must be mysterious (such as murder by unknown
others); some people believe that the deaths have to gory and gross; some
people believe that all deaths (including natural ones) will haunt a house;
others believe that the adjacent units on the same floor and the units on
top and underneath are also haunted. Legally speaking, deaths do not
constitute a flaw in the apartment unit and therefore the Land Property
Transactions Office does not collect any data on "haunted" houses.

[026] Legendary
Translation (7/8/2006) (Hong
Kong Media Workers Discussion Forum)
Original English: At KFC, we do chicken right
Translated Chinese: 在肯德基 ，我們做雞是對的 。Back-translated English: At KFC, we are
right to be prostitutes.

[Administrative Note] Oh, I
forgot to mention this. On this Sunday (7/9/2006), if you are in Hong
Kong, you can watch TVB Pearl at 6:55pm-7:30pm for an interview with the
EastSouthWestNorth blogger. I am not sure what will be shown, but you
might be able to watch how I actually translated something from Chinese into
English. I was asked to translate something while a camera was perched
over my shoulder. Anyway, I am in New York City right now and so I
won't be able to see it.

[Administrative Note] I'm going
to New York City where I will stay for a week for a series of
business meetings. So there will be the usual 24-hour blackout without
website updates. I am also backed up on blog posts as I have to
write a conference paper, so there won't be much time for any long
translations. But here is one candidate item that I would have
translated: 一盘录像带掀翻刘志华北京官商地产圈开始瓦解
(note: proxy service required in China). However, I did make the time
to translate the abbreviated version of The
Case of Gao Yingying because this is currently a major case on the
Chinese Internet forum. Here is the situational analysis at cngamesbbs:
短短几个小时，各门户网站这条新闻后的网友评论纷纷超过了万条。那是沸腾的血，那是悲情的雪。六月天下雪了，好大的雪！ (in
translation: Within a few short hours, there are over 10,000 comments
already at the various web portals. This is about blood boiling over,
this is about the sorrowful snow. It is snowing in June and it is
snowing very hard!) I predict that this will become a 'sensitive'
subject very soon because this was clearly an egregious failure of the
system.

[025] Going
Four for Five (07/07/2006) In a note last December, I named
five of my favorite Chinese-language blogs in Hong Kong (see Comment
200512#039). Three of them -- Sidekick, Hung One Bean and
Florence "Over The Rainbow" Lai -- have already been interviewed
by Radio71.hk. Can I presume to promote my fourth female blogger: Miss
Lee In Summer, with a sample post such as 領導?
Here is the partial translation about why one is forced to choose a leader
from among Donald Tsang, Anson Chan and Regina Ip.

A worker has to have a capable
superior/leader who knows "strong public governance (強政勵治)."
But if the leader only knows how to be strong without being able to govern,
then it is just blowing smoke without clearing his mouth. He is just
claiming the credit and leaving the mess for his workers to clean up.
That will devastate the workers.

When Miss Lee was young, she used to ask
Mrs. Lee why she had to wash the dishes and mop the floor instead of her
younger brother. Mrs. Lee would always say that she was obviously
going to delegate the person that she could trust (hmmm ... my younger
brother is not in Hong Kong right now, so I'm betting that he won't read
this ...). That is to say, people who can't perform will never be
asked to perform. This logic does not seem right! ...

At 11:56 on July 4, there was a 5.1
earthquake in Wen'an, Hebei that was felt in Beijing and Tianjin. At
12:16, twenty minutes after the earthquake occurred, the Xinhua News Agency
reported this suddenly occurring natural disaster. The news was then
carried by the various web portals on their front pages, and CCTV "News
at 12:30" also reported the news immediately.

The timely reporting by the media after the
earthquake calmed the shock among people. But some people living in
the quake zone were not satisfied with the 20 minute delay in media
reporting. Between the twenty minutes of the earthquake itself and the
media report, all sorts of information as well as rumors have already been
propagated on the Internet and via mobile telephone. At the Beijing
Earthquake Office, the five telephone lines took hundreds of calls.
Compared to the communications technology in today's society, 20 minutes is
still a beat too slow, and that appears to be a very long time for people
who are scared about the suddenly occurring event ...

[023] China
Is Number One (07/06/2006) It is axiomatic in media sales that
if you look hard enough, you will be number one somewhere (such as Men 25-29
watching television at Sunday 3:00am-3:14am in Fujian province).
Anyway, the database is the website known as World
Cup Death Watch, in which the blogger scans news reports of
World-Cup-related deaths around the world. As reported in ChineseNewsNet
today, there are 50 reported deaths so far and China leads with
11.
Why so many deaths in China? The World Cup Death Watch blogger wrote:
"Why so many deaths in China ... when they don't even have a team in play? The prevailing theory lays the blame on time zones. It is late at night in China while the games are played in Germany, a perfect recipe for drinking the night away. The same theory is being blamed on the recent spate of
Chinese Facial
Paralysis."

But we can go back to simple population demography. There are about 6
billion people on this planet and China has 1.3 billion (= 22%). Out
of 50 deaths, China has 11 (=22%). What do you think? Do you
still think that China is getting a larger share than it should?

[022] The
Best July 1st Photo of Anson Chan (07/06/2006) The following
priceless photo was cropped from Boxun.
Either you understand the import or you don't.

[021] Yet Another
Huge Crisis in Media Ethics in Hong Kong (07/05/2006) ... and you
definitely will not read about it in the English-language newspapers.
From the Apple Daily gossip section (quoted in the Hong
Kong Media Workers Discussion Forum:

(in translation) When Anson Chan was
about ready to leave, an intern radio reporter was right close to Mrs. Chan
with microphone in hand. She found two television cameras pressing
down upon her shoulders. There were people all around her and she
could not move. At the moment, she felt someone fondling her
buttocks. Eventually, the person tried to remove her Internet-capable
movile telephone.

With no choice, the female reporter shouted
"Sexual assault!" and "Help!" But her profession
colleagues not only did not help, but another reporter actually told her to
shut up because he could not catch Mrs. Chan's voice. That is called a
genuine lack of sympathy.

So the female reporter was thoroughly taken
advantage of. Afterwards, she complained to her boss and filed a
police report. The police told her that she was not the first reporter
to report losing something, so someone was obviously taken advantage of the
siutation. Her boss was angry because while getting the news was
important, it should not be so important that reporters should ignore a call
for help.

Meanwhile, today's Next Weekly magazine has
another apparent exclusive about Anson Chan's bodyguard in sunglasses.
The reporters do not seem to be pleased with this man, who was compared to Bus
Uncle in crudeness. So they countered with this observation: the man did
not realize his fly was not fully zipped up!!! There is no accompanying
photographic evidence, although any reporter worth his salt should have
snapped it.

[020] Minimum
Wage in Hong Kong (07/05/2006) The folks at the HK Golden
Forum are having some fun with this job
ad posted at the Labour Department. Here are the
specifications:

HK$120 per 7-hour-day means hourly wage of HK$17.1, compared to the gold
standard of HK$18/hour offered by McDonald's. Alternately, HK$120 per day for 25 work days
per month means HK$3,000 per month, compared to the gold standard of
HK$3,320/month for foreign domestic helpers.

The interest at the HK
Golden Forum is generated by the identity of the employer. It is the
Hong Kong Democratic Party. There is some discussion about how this
democratic 'Uncle
Scrooge' is offering half the amount of the proposed minimum wage of
HK$6,000/month. However, nobody there cared to point out that the
Democratic Party does not support the minimum wage proposal (see Michael
DeGolyer, The
Standard, June 22, 2006).

Hong Kong is a free market and this is a public and transparent job offer. If the job seekers
would rather make HK$18/hour in an air-conditioned McDonald's, then so be
it. This employer will have to come back with a better offer.
This employer can even offer HK$5 per hour and all they will get is mockery
on Internet forums.

[019] The
Contrarian View (07/05/2006) There is a list of criticisms of
the draft Emergency Response Law with respect to media reporting at Suddenly
Breaking Incidents in China. For special praise, I name David
Bandurski at China Media Project for his relentless effort.

There appears to be no support for the other side of the argument. So
once again, I find myself having to assume the unenviable contrarian
position. At issue, do you believe that everything goes with the media
and they must never ever be accountable? Honest mistakes can be
forgiven, but what about malice and calumny? Let me give you two
examples:

Do you believe any government or people
should accept this as normal conduct in their daily lives? For one, I
don't and I won't accept this kind of thing. Most people probably will
not. What remains is haggling over the details.

[018] I just the other day got, an internet
was sent by my staff ... (07/05/2006) This would have been
just funny but it is serious because the speaker is Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska),
chairman of the US Senate Commerce Committee. From 27B
Stoke 6:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

In the residential area around Beijing's
South Railroad Station, there are thousands of people from all over China
who stay there while they go about petitioning various government
departments. If you walk south from the station for a couple hundred
meters, you will reach the main street which is just three meters wide and
lined with cheap food shops, stationeries and professional writers (of
petitions). The walls are pasted with posters that present
individuals' problems or condemn corruption.

On this day, the reporter saw something unusual on the wall outside the
Supreme Court's gate at the main street's entrance. There was a
photocopied version of an interview with Hong Kong's legislator Leung
"Long Hair" Kwok-hung from February this year. The story
covered Leung's history and how he donated HK$40,000 from his monthly salary
towards getting legal aid. A petitioner read the the article and said:
"It would be great if Long Hair is here!" Another petitioner
said: "The Communists could not let someone like that come here!
We are just being kicked around like soccer balls by different
departments. No one is willing to give us justice!"

The spectators said that they do not know
how this interview got posted. Someone later said that six Hong Kong
university students came a few days ago. Some of the students used a
mini-videocamera to film the petition village. When the petitioners
saw the students, they immediately surrounded them and presented their
stories. As the crowd grew larger, some petitioners were concerned
that the police would come and so they escorted the students out of the
village and put them into taxis. It is likely that the students left
that Long Hair interview behind.

[016] The
SCMP Political Animal (07/04/2006) The special SCMP section
known as Political Animal may give a reason for the under-performance of
corporate management of the July 1st march (as described in The
Parachutist's Adventure in Hong Kong):

The turnout for Saturday's pro-democracy rally may not have been very impressive, but it didn't stop political parties and civic groups from raking in the dollars to help their causes.

As might be expected, organiser the Civil Human Rights Front was the biggest winner, collecting more than $200,000 from the sale of badges, T-shirts and whistles.
The sharp tongue and political satire of talk-show host Wong Yuk-man and "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung helped the League of Social Democrats take an impressive $168,000.
More modest, but still a handy sum, was the $100,000 earned by the Civic Party from selling a range of items including "democracy eggs" and books written by legislators Ronny Tong Ka-wah and Mandy Tam Heung-man. The Democratic Party also raised about $100,000.

Not everyone was happy.

One activist said the rally had been turned into a "marketplace" for what he termed illegal hawking.
"Everyone is supposed to have a hawker licence to set up a stall in the street. Ours was rejected by the police because they said the rally area was too crowded for a hawker stall," he said. "As far as I understand, there's a lot of illegal hawking out there."

So the corporate managers are maximizing
their personal utilities, which do not have match the overall
corporate objectives. In this case, the corporate management seems quite
happy to let the good
times roll.

[015]Radio
Program Announcement (07/03/2006) Appearing on Radio71.hk on
Tuesday (July 4) will be "Over
The Rainblow" reporter/blogger Florence Lai.
(Here is the partial translation: Florence's blog "Over The
Rainbow" was selected by the EastSouthWestNorth blogger Mr. Soong as
one of his five favorite bloggers (see Comment
200512#039). ESWN wrote: Florence is a media worker and I wish
that every media worker would have a personal blog so that I understand why the news is what it is.)

[014] Taiwan
By The Numbers (07/03/2006) This survey is an addition to the
ones collected in Comment
200606#093 on the day after the recall vote in parliament.

(China
Times) (June 27-29; 1,084 respondents using the telephone
directory as base)
- overall opinion of President Chen Shui-bian: 75.1% dissatisfied;
24.9% satisfied. By political position, pan-green dissatisfied 35.1%,
neutral dissatisified 70.8%.
- opinion of KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou's performance during the recall
vote: 44.3% said that Ma took the right steps and positions; 30.6% said
too weak; 17.2% said too strong. By political position, pan-green
24.3% said Ma took the right steps and positions.
- opinion of PFP chairman James Soong during the recall vote: 59.4%
said that he was putting on a show; 27.1% said that he did right; 10.4% said
that he did not do enough. By political position, pan-green 83.8% and
neutal 64.4% said that it was a show.

As for Lee Yuan-tseh saying that even though DPP has "limited
accomplishments but plenty of corruption cases," people should stop the
fighting: 31.6% agree with Lee's statement; 24.9% agree with the need to
stop the fighting but disagree with Lee's assessment of DPP; 19.1% thinks
Lee is talking rubbish; 15.4% agree with Lee's assessment of DPP but
disagrees with the statement about fighitng.

About the possible "no confidence in government" vote:
41.5% think President Chen should serve out the remaining two years of his
term; 18.3% think President Chen should appoint a cabinet from the
Legislature's majority party; 16.4% want another recall vote; 13.9% think
the opposition should ask for a no confidence vote in order to have new
parliamentary elections.

[013] An
Internet Survey in China (07/03/2006) (Apple
Daily) An Internet survey was recently conducted by the
website "China's National Situation Advisory Network (中國國情諮詢網
www.s007s.com))." 1,202 visitors
to the website case their votes. Here are the survey results about
confidence in the Chinese Communists

What does this represent? This is a survey of visitors to a particular website and therefore the results represent the opinion of those
people who visit this particular website AND participated in this
survey. The website operator said that there are about 5,000 visits
per day, so somehow 1,202 people selected themselves to particpate in this
survey. It is also unknown how many of the survey participants came
from mainland China. To summarize, this means NOTHING!!!

[012] Banned
Before Arrival (07/03/2006) (Ming
Pao) Li Datong, former chief editor of the Freezing Point
supplement of China Youth Daily, said that his 290,000-word new book is
titled "Using News To Influence Today -- The Chronicles of the Freezing
Point Weekly Magazine." The book describes all the major
incidents and changes at Freezing Point since inception, as well as the
significance for Chinese media and society. But before even a draft
has been seen, the authorities have already banned the book. Li Datong is
therefore publishing the book in Hong Kong this month.

[in translation] I have seen enough
fake news, but this is the first time that I have read something this fake.

According to yesterday's Chengdu Evening
News, 17-year-old female Yu Ping of Chongzhou refused to live in her
comfortable and spacious room and moved into the pig sty where she stayed
for 14 years. The report said that she was imitating the King of Yue,
Gou Jian (勾践),
who lost his kingdom but regained it by deliberately depriving himself of
luxuries in order to steel his will. This contemporary version of the
King of Yue did not waste her efforts, for she scored 519 marks to become
second in her class and fifth in her town in the middle school examinations.

What an inspiring story! Except this
is a bit too fake. Never mind anything else, but let us examine the
fact that "a seventeen-year-old lived in a pig sty for fourteen
years" and draw some conclusions. Did a 3-year-old girl already
know about the legend of the King of Yue? Did that reporter think that
a 3-year-old girl would know about what the King of Yue did? If the
girl really moved into the pig sty when she was three years old, then it
only meant that her parents were criminally guilty of child abuse and the
reporter should have called the police immediately to put a stop to this
maltreatment which may still be going on. Instead, we get treated with a
discussion about whether "contemporary society still needs
self-deprivation for self-discipline!" ... Please, will the
interviewers and writers exercise some commonsense and show a little bit of
professionalism?

[010] Character
(07/02/2006) (ETTV)
When former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui met with current Presidential
Office Secretary-General Mark Chen recently, Lee wanted Chen to pass along
something to President Chen Shui-bian?
What? It was a copy of Lung Ying-tai's Today's
Lesson: Character. This essay was highly critical of President
Chen, and former President Lee thinks that it is a good essay. You can
read whatever message into this act. For China and Hong Kong, the fact
is that there is no public intellectual whose work has sufficient reach and
influence like Lung Ying-tai. Is this an environmental issue?
No, you have to consider how Lung Ying-tai emerged into the public sphere in
Taiwan during the early 1980's under circumstances that must be described as
extremely unfavorable for public discourse. Still, she caused a
phenomenon known as the Lung Ying-tai cyclone. How so? I say
that it has to do with ... character.

[009] Top
Hong Kong News Story (07/02/2006) As noted by Letters
from China, Apple Daily (HK) has this feature of showing the most
popular stories at the website. So what's hot and what's not on July
2nd?
The front page story ("To fight for universal suffrage, 58,000 people
went into the streets) was number two. What was number one? It
says "The
Tsing Yi edition of Fiona Sit 'Low ...'"). Huh? Now
this is not even about entertainer Fiona Sit. This is about Miss Hong Kong
contestant number 8 徐淑敏,
who lives in the Tsing Yi district and is supposed to have some resemblance
to Fiona Sit. Rather than memorize her real name, she is just referred
to as the Fiona Sit of Tsing Yi. The paparazzi followed her around and caught her in a
low cut dress having dinner with her boyfriend whom the newspaper termed an
'engineer uncle' (工程阿叔)
because he is an engineer who is almost fifty years old.
Now who cares, really? People care because of photos like this one
from Easyfinder magazine:

[008] Upskirt
King Of The World? (07/02/2006) (Apple
Daily) The individual known as the Wolf of Eslite (誠品之狼)
has been arrested for the fourth time in the last five years for taking
upskirt photos. This time, he was in a Watson's shop on Nanking Road
(Taipei) with a palm-sized SONY DSC-T3 camera when the female victim's boyfriend, who is a police investigator, observed and tackled him.
When the police searched his home, they found almost 15,000 upskirt photos
involving possibly as many as 2,000 female victims. Furthermore, he
had so much time and energy that he stored each photo in four different
orientations. His explanation: "I get excited when I see female
underpants. I cannot suppress my desire to take these stealth photos!
(只要看到女生底褲就會興奮，無法克制這種偷拍的慾望！)"
He has been released on bail of NT$10,000, so that he is out there again.

[007] Lost
In Translation (07/02/2006) It is likely that you have come
across Panda
Slugger by Soyoung Ho
at Washington Monthly in the matter of China expert Mike Pillsbury and the
inexplicable translation distortions. A lesser known article is Lost
in Translation by Gregory Kulacki at the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists. If this meant to be a correct reading of primary
Chinese-language documents, then one would think that there has to be more
care. Here is the paragraph that struck me:

Ironically, during the same month that the United States was sounding the alarm about a space Pearl Harbor, two Hong Kong newspapers
(Sing Tao Jih Pao and Xing Dao Daily) published articles describing a secret weapon that China was supposedly developing to carry out a surprise attack against enemy space assets. [8] They called it a "parasite satellite"--a small, sophisticated device that could attach itself to an enemy satellite and disrupt or destroy it on command. References to these Hong Kong newspaper articles subsequently appeared in the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Pentagon's Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. [9]

Now I live in Hong Kong and I wonder about
the two daily newspapers Sing Tao Jih Pao and Xing Dao Daily. These are
not two newspapers -- this is one newspaper and the two titles are its
spellings under two different Romanization systems. Indeed, here is
footnote 8:

So the two newspapers are Sing Tao Jih Pao
and Ming Pao (and not Xing Dao Daily). What ever happened to simple
fact-checking and proof-reading?

Here is more explanation about this Xing Dao Daily:

Pentagon analysts should have been able to trace the story to Hong despite the common practice in Chinese newspapers of sharing stories without attribution, since the article appearing in Xing Dao Daily presents the relevant information in the same sequence as Hong's original internet posting with several passages copied verbatim (character for character in the Chinese). In considering the credibility of the information, the Pentagon should also have noted changes in the Xing Dao Daily that could have affected the quality of the newspaper's reporting. In particular, the March 1999 sale of the staid but unprofitable newspaper led to editorial changes designed to increase circulation and target a younger audience. As a result, by the time the article appeared, the Xing Dao Daily had been converted into a tabloid-style newspaper.

That must be news to the readers of Sing Tao
or Ming Pao. These are not tabloid-style newspapers. Sing Pao may
be characterized as a conservative pro-government, pro-business and
pro-Beijing newspaper that thrives off classified job and real-estate
advertising, while Ming Pao is self-characterized as the truthworthy
middle-of-the-road newspaper of record.

But if the point is that you can't trust all the things that you read, it has been well
made.

Thank you for your wonderful site that brings to
those of us who can't read Chinese, news of what is going on outside our
English-based world. In my view, the SCMP does a horrendous job of covering
the city, so it is again no surprise that it has taken this paper over a
week to comment on the Cream matter that you have referred to on your site.

What shocked me was not that it took the SCMP so
long, but two of the segments in the story:

First from Shirley Wong Wai-kwan from ESCAF, an
organisation you would think be up in arms about this. Here is a great
opportunity for her to really make a statement, bring her cause to the fore
at a time when public opinion on her side and awareness is extremely high.
But no. "Not very clear," says Ms Wong when asked about if it is
pornographic or not. Hmm ... Not very clear. Nice bit of waffling. A
career in the government awaits.

Maybe I need to consult my dictionary. Now where is
it? Ah yes.

por·nog·ra·phy n.

Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other
material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. The
presentation or production of this material.

Now let's check back to the pictures. Seems pretty
close to me.

The second was from the professor of journalism and
member of the HK Press Council Kenneth Leung Wai-yin, using the terms
"mountain" and "molehill", said he "couldn't
understand" why people thought they were obscene. "More revealing
clothing on the beach," he sniffs. Yes, Mt Leung, that's true.
But the moment you photograph these more revealing outfits and the people
barely contained in them, put them on a cover of a magazine, it becomes -
checking back with definition above - pornography. Why is that so hard a
concept to grasp?

Of course, I am not a professor of journalism, or
anything for that matter, but I am going to side with Justice Potter Stewart
on this one as far as definitions go.

But the question here is not obscene or not, is it?
The problem that everyone has, that Ms Wong and Mr Leung missed - or if they
didn't, the SCMP reporter missed - that these were taken of a 14 year old.
There is no societal norm that thinks this is OK. None.

Incidentally, I work in the music business here, and
no one I know thought this was at all OK. Not that that settles anything,
but I thought you should know - kind of by way of disclaimer.

So yet again, a hearty "well played, sir"
and a golf clap to the SCMP, for thanks to them a significant portion of the
population lives in complete ignorance as to what is going on in their own
city.

Yes, much of the Chinese press is obsessed with
gossip, scandal and gory details, but as these provide some of the fuel that
drives society in the city, not to not report or reflect on them is quite
irresponsible, don't you think?

[004] Newspaper
Price War in Kunming (07/01/2006) (Reporter
Home) Here is the chronicle:

On June 16, Kunming Daily's Metropolis Times mobilized several hundred
distributors to sell annual subscriptions at 30 RMB (old copies are not
collected).

Shortly afterwards, the other two metropolitan newspapers New Life News and
Yunnan Information were forced to match Metropolis Times at 20 RMB per
year. Only Chuncheng Evening News refused to budge from 25 RMB per
year.

At 20 RMB per year, this is equivalent to 6 cents per day. In the former
newspaper battle of Nanjing at which the price was cut down to 10 cents per
copy, the
newspapers were only about a dozen or so pages. In Kunming today, each
of the metropolis newspapers carries 50 to 60 pages. The cost of
printing each newspaper is between 1.3 to 1.5 RMB, sometimes as much as 1.8
RMB. The annual weight of each newspaper is about 70 or 80
kilograms. At present, Kunming recyclers pay 1.3 RMB per kilogram of
old newspapers. Thus, each subscriber will receive about 100 RMB per year
just by selling back the old issues. So it is profitable to subscribe to
newspapers in Kunming today, to the point where one should get as many
subscriptions as possible without having to read them.

[003] An
Egregious Error (07/01/2006) (Reporter
Home) The following error was detected at this URL (http://gb.chinabroadcast.cn/3821/2006/06/28/152@1109366.htm):
(in translation) On June 21, this reporter went to the five police posts
under the Zaoshan police station in the Guangan district and used the camera
to record the service lies such as
"Number one village police in China" and "I am the servant of
agrarian economy, I am the protector of rural village security, I am the
close friend of peasants, I am the communicator of laws and
regulations."
These politically correct slogans were all branded as 'lies' (谎言).

[002] Taiwan
By The Numbers (07/01/2006) (China
Times) (Survey of 1,059 adults in Taiwan sponsored by China Times
and CtiTV conducted on June 28-29; methodology is using a random sample from
the telephone directory books and then randomly changing the last two
digits).

- Did President Chen Shui-bian come clean? 58% no; 7% yes.
- Is the Democratic Progressive Party clean and uncorrupt? 56%
no; 13% yes.
- Is the Nationalist Party clean and uncorrupt? 49% no; 16% yes.
- Performance of Su Tseng-chan during recall qualify him for president?
33% yes; 41% no (note: the China Times interpretation is that the 41%
thought that Su tried to look as if he was staying above the fray but also
defended the scandal-plagued Chen and this inconsistency disqualifies him;
the 33% thought that Su tried to please Chen in order to preserve his job as
Premier and his role as successor to Chen. These positions are too
complicated to have been asked in the interview)
- Performance of Ma Ying-jeou during recall qualify him for president?
55% approve; 24% disapprove.

[001]
More
About Liu Zhihua (07/01/2006) (Apple Daily via ChineseNewsNet)
More news from the Roadside News Agency. The origins of Liu Zhihua's
problem were tied to Beijing's largest incomplete building: the AC Morgan
Center. In 2002, the Morgan Center announced that the AC Morgan
Company (USA) intended to build its Asian headquarters. AC Morgan is
unrelated to JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley; actually, it is a Chinese company
from Henan province. Originally, the AC Morgan was supposed to consist
of one hotel, one office building and three residential apartment
buildings. In October 2003, construction was halted due to lack of
funds. In January 2006, the Beijing city government requisitioned the
land and sold it off at 1.76 billion RMB by auction.

So the rumor is that Liu Zhihua 'crossed' certain people in the AC Morgan
affair. Liu was lured to have a tryst with a woman during which the
entire proceedings were secretly taped and then shipped to the Central
Disciplinary Committee. The tape was said to be crisp and
high-quality, and this is the reason why the Central Disciplinary Committee
said that it possessed "introvertible" evidence about the
"dissoluteness" of Liu Zhihua, and they issued the statement as
soon as the screening session was over.